The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir

by Chin, Staceyann

  “So Auntie Ella is your mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that means I am your cousin.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. So what is your name?”

  “Annmarie.”

  “My name is Stacey.”

  “I know.”

  “How you know that? My brother came inside here already?”

  “No.”

  “Well, his name is Delano. You saw where him went?”

  “He’s inside.” She points to Auntie Ella’s room.

  “All right.”

  I don’t know what else to say. She kicks her heels against the couch. We sit there in silence until Auntie Ella comes to call us for dinner. At the table, Auntie Ella says that since there are only two bedrooms, Annmarie has to share her room with me and Delano and Grandma. She tells us that she and Annmarie are glad to have us in their home. She says that the place is small but we are welcome. She only asks that in her house we respect the Lord.

  The rules are simple. We can watch TV from sign-on to sign-off every day except Saturday. Saturday nights we have to be in bed by nine p.m. On Sunday we have to wake up early and well rested. Auntie Ella says that that is the only way we can be ready to hear the word of the Lord on Sunday morning.

  Delano chews the devil out of a chicken bone. The bubbly orange soft drink tickles my nose when I sip it. I ask Auntie Ella what is in the rest of the house. She tells me that the house does not belong to her. She only rents a small part of it from her friend Mrs. Bremmer, who lives in the rest of the house with her family. Grandma gets up to clear the table, but Auntie Ella makes her sit and eat some more.

  Delano, Grandma, and I have one big bed. Annmarie has a small one. Grandma smells my mouth to make sure I brushed my teeth properly and we climb into bed. Auntie Ella stands by the bed and prays with us. Her hand rests gently on my head as she asks God to give me strength to love in the face of adversity.

  “Father God, I ask you to keep this blessed light afloat in the heart of this precious little girl. Remind her that she is already spoken for in your blood. Keep her body safe. As she ages, help her to navigate the difficulties that lie ahead with hope and generosity.”

  Each of us gets our own prayer. When the prayers are done, Annmarie quietly slips under her blue blanket and covers her head. Grandma’s chest rises and falls as she breathes next to me. I know Delano is not asleep because he is shaking his leg. I don’t know if Annmarie is awake, so I move closer to Delano and whisper in his ear.

  “Delano, I wish me and you could live here with Auntie Ella every day.”

  He pushes the covers up under my chin, leans over, and kisses my cheek.

  But the Greatest of These Is Charity

  Kingston is very different from Bethel Town. Kingston life has telephones and black-and-yellow taxis and streetlights that come on by themselves at night. When the ice-cream vendor comes, he rings his bicycle bells right outside the gate. Grandma says that if you get a good job, Kingston is a place somebody can have a decent life. I ask her if that is true even when your mother runs away and leaves you. She says anything is possible while you work hard and trust God.

  I love Kingston, but I don’t understand Annmarie at all. I try to talk to her, but she never says more than a few words. She is four years older than me and quiet as a mouse. Grandma says to leave her alone. “Not everybody mouth set on spring like yours!”

  Auntie Ella works as a secretary at a big important company called the Jamaica Flour Mills. Every day she brings home pens and pencils and funny-colored paper on which Delano and I copy Bible verses from her King James version. Sometimes there are baked cookies and sweets, but mostly it is just stationery with J. F. MILLS typed in black at the top.

  The first Saturday we spend in Kingston, Auntie Ella takes Delano, Annmarie, and me to Hope Gardens to visit the Hope Zoo. Auntie Ella asks what animals we want to look at first. Delano wants to see the lions. We enter through a big black gate and walk down the path leading to the lions. Behind a high metal fence there are three lions sleeping like there is no tomorrow. Delano tosses a rock through one of the tiny holes in the pattern of the fence. None of them move. We keep tossing rocks until Auntie Ella says it’s time to see the snakes. As we leave, a sleepy old lion yawns and I see three decaying teeth inside his big mouth.

  The snakes are much better. They wrap themselves around tree branches. They slither and hiss at us through the big glass window. Delano wants to take a snake home. Auntie Ella tells him that she wouldn’t be able to sleep if she knew there was a snake anywhere nearby. There are goats and pigs and mongooses and rabbits cowering in the corners of various cages. Delano says that all the animals look sad. I remember the eyes of the dead peel-neck fowl.

  “If I was in charge, instead of locking up the animal them inside a cage, I would let them run about in the gardens. The goats can eat the grass and the snakes can climb the trees all them want.”

  Auntie Ella’s voice is gentle. “But, Delano, if the snakes and lions were running about, we couldn’t come inside the gardens. It would be dangerous for us if they were free.”

  “It don’t matter if we come inside here. I don’t like to see them in the cage.”

  “Okay, sir. We won’t come back to the zoo anymore.”

  I skip ahead to Annmarie. “Hey, Annmarie! You like coming to the zoo and looking at the animals?”

  She looks through me and shrugs.

  On the way home we stop at the supermarket. The Hi-Lo Supermarket in Liguanea is so big it needs three or more cashiers to take care of all the customers. The groceries are sealed packages: sugar, flour, milk—even the meat comes in a little white tray. Everything looks bigger and better than the goods in the little shop in Bethel Town. Delano says that Hi-Lo is even bigger than his father’s supermarket. I stand in the aisle looking at the rows and rows of things on the shelves. It’s not fair that Annmarie gets to live with these shiny packets all year long. She walks quietly behind her mother and I try my best not to hate her. She doesn’t even look excited to be here. I cannot imagine a better life. To live in Kingston with a speaky-spokey mother who takes you to the zoo and never shouts at you.

  Back at the house we take the groceries downstairs. Delano and I are racing to see who can take the most bags down the stairs. Auntie Ella sees me leaping the steps three at a time and tells me to stop or else. I jump and land on my knees, breaking the bottles of garlic and onion powder. Delano takes one look at the broken glass and darts out the back door.

  Aunti Ella comes to the top of the stairs. “Stacey, what was that?”

  “Nothing, Auntie Ella.”

  “How can it be nothing when I distinctly heard something break?”

  She comes down a few steps and sees me scraping up the glass and powder.

  “Why would you tell me it was nothing? Why did you feel the need to lie to me? Lying is an abomination before God, child. Did you know that? Come up here! Leave the thing there and come up the stairs to me.”

  I know that lying is an abomination. I did not mean to lie to her. I want to move up the stairs toward her, but I bite my lip and stay where I am.

  “Staceyann Chin, did you not hear me speak to you?”

  I fold my arms and rest my weight on one leg. I stick my chin out and look up at her.

  “My goodness! Is this a spirit of stubbornness I see you exhibiting there? Staceyann, come up these stairs immediately!”

  I do not move. Auntie Ella makes her way down the steps. My heart is pounding against my shirt as she stops right in front of me. She puts her hand on my shoulder and tilts my face up toward her.

  “I never would have guessed that you were like this. I am ashamed of your behavior. Go upstairs and sit in the living room while I clean up this mess you have made here.”

  I stomp upstairs and park myself in front of the TV. I can’t concentrate. I am so worried about what will happen when Auntie Ella comes back upstairs. I turn the sound down very low so I can h
ear her coming. That means I have to sit right up in front of the TV to hear anything.

  “You shouldn’t sit so close to the screen, you’ll end up hurting your eyes.”

  I nearly leap out of my clothes. I didn’t hear her come into the room, but Auntie Ella is now sitting on the chair beside me. She does not look upset. Suddenly I want her to be my mother. I want to throw my arms around her and cry.

  “Auntie Ella, just leave me alone and stop acting like you are my mother! I don’t have no mother. Your sister run gone leave me and me brother! That mean nobody can tell me what to do!”

  Grandma walks in and sees me shouting at Auntie Ella. She pulls off her blue house slipper and hits me smack in the mouth. She raises the slipper again and Auntie Ella stops her.

  Grandma pushes Auntie Ella away. “No, Ella! No. She have no business talking to you like that! You who treat her so good? No, I not going to allow that kind of behavior in here!”

  Grandma sends me outside. “Go on! Go out a door and think about why you so fresh! You must be smelling the young green of you-self in here!”

  I sit at the top of the back staircase, crying softly, wishing I were living with my own real mother. I hear Delano’s laughter coming from the yard next door. I can cry as hard and loud as I want. My brother is too far away to hear me. Everybody is too far away to hear me. I lay my head onto my arms and weep.

  “Don’t cry, don’t cry, baby, I coming.”

  Through the blur of tears I look down the flight of stairs. An intently reassuring face looks up at me. The little girl is about four years old and rust colored. She has a big nose, thin lips, and very long, very kinky hair. She has the most beautiful smile I have ever seen. As she wobbles up the steps, her wild brown hair waves from side to side like a giant shapeless animal. She smiles again with coin-deep dimples on either side of her face.

  “Don’t cry, please. I coming, man. Wipe y’ face, wipe y’ face. I coming.”

  She looks so funny scrambling up the steps that I start laughing. Finally she makes it to the top. She plops down beside me and hugs me in triumph. Then she pats my face with her dirty hands until the tears are gone.

  Moments later a woman with two sturdy braids comes to get her. She tells me the little girl’s name is Racquel. I ask her if she is going to beat Racquel. She laughs and tells me she should. “Racquel is just being nasty and running away from getting her hair wash and comb. But I try me best not to beat them too much. I leave the beating to them parents.”

  “So you are not her mother?” I ask.

  “No,” Racquel pipes up, “she is my auntie Myrtle and she is our helper.”

  Auntie Myrtle tells me she lives and works with the Bremmers in the other half of the house.

  “So, Auntie Myrtle, if you work for them and live with them, that means that you at work every day, right?”

  “Well, sort of. But me don’t have to work on Sunday, except to cook breakfast and dinner. After me cook me can do as me please. But how old you is, anyway? Why you asking all these big-woman questions? You is the police?”

  I laugh out loud. “No, Auntie Myrtle, my name is Staceyann Chin. Auntie Ella is my aunt and I am here to spend the summer holidays with her.”

  “All right, Miss Chin, turn over the prisoner and come with me.”

  I follow them to the concrete cistern on the back veranda next door and stay until Racquel’s mass of tangles has been shampooed, conditioned, and braided.

  Auntie Myrtle offers me dinner. Racquel and I sit at the table and she puts three plates on the table and yells upstairs, “Chauntelle! Chauntelle! Turn off the TV and come eat your dinner!”

  The Bremmers have two girls. Racquel has a big sister, Chauntelle. She is six years old. She has the strangest eyes. They are a brilliant shade of sea green, like she is a white person on a color TV. But she has short thick black-people hair that sticks up off her head in four even plaits. Their side of the house is much, much bigger than Auntie Ella’s. Their living room has more furniture in it than Auntie Ella’s. Against one wall there is a white lounge chair. Against the opposite wall are a big velvet couch, a dining table with a glass top, and a big wooden whatnot with crystal and wood-carved animals on the shelves and that houses a stereo system with a record player and a tape deck. The giant color TV sits in the middle shelf of the whatnot.

  That evening Mrs. Bremmer tells Auntie Ella that she is lucky to have a niece as bright as I am. “She is such a nice little girl. And so pretty! Her hair is so soft and curly! And you know me, Ella, that is the kind of skin I would absolutely die for!” She turns to me. “Listen, Stacey, I am going to America for a few days. Do you want me to bring something back from Miami for you?”

  The way she asks makes me hesitate. It’s as if she expects me to say yes. I don’t want her to think that I am begging her for anything. I also don’t want Racquel to think that she is better than me because I beg her mother to bring me something from America. I don’t know what kind of things she would bring, but I want them.

  “That would be nice, Mrs. Bremmer. But you don’t have to bring anything for me. Only if you want to.”

  “My goodness, she is so sweet! You have to call me Auntie Pam. I will be your auntie too. Ella, be careful I don’t steal her from you.”

  The next morning Auntie Ella finds Racquel—nose pressed against the window—asking if Stacey can come out and play. All day long I show her how to play church, and police-and-thief, and act out the love songs we hear on the radio. We pick hard green mangoes long before they are ready for eating. We add salt and pepper and vinegar and eat the pieces until we are sick. I direct Racquel and Chauntelle in an impromptu concert for Delano. I teach them how to make otaheiti apple and sugar concoctions.

  Auntie Pam brings me back coloring books, red ribbons for my hair, and white lace panties—each with a little pink satin bow on the front. She also brings me a pair of shoes. They were really intended for Chauntelle, but they are too big for her. The shoes fit me so well that Auntie Pam says they are mine. She tells Auntie Ella that she refuses to charge her a penny. She says everything looks so nice that I must wear them to Racquel’s birthday party later in the summer.

  Sunday in Kingston is the best. Everybody gets dressed up from head to toe. Auntie Ella calls a taxi to drive us all the way to church. I love the congregation in Kingston. Everybody smells like perfume. And the ladies hug and kiss each other when they say hello. The preacher doesn’t scream at us about hell and damnation. He just talks about the peace and joy that await us in heaven. And nobody screams or falls to the floor during the service. At the end the old ladies ask if I need to go to the bathroom or if I enjoyed the service today.

  On the third Sunday we are in Kingston, I put on my blue dress with the brown sleeves and the pleated gathers at the waist. It used to belong to Samantha, but she got too big for it. The dress does not quite fit me; the neck is very wide, so wide that when I dip my chin I see the waistband of my panties peeking up at me. The brown sleeves are ugly, but the big yellow bow in the back makes me feel like a flower. I check my reflection in the mirror.

  I don’t want to crush my dress, so I sit gingerly on the big couch watching TV. The popular American televangelist Oral Roberts is on the screen, charging sinners to give more of their salaries to God. Auntie Ella comes into the living room and takes one look at my dress and breaks out in tongues. She calls out to Annmarie to go get the little red polka-dot dress. Annmarie throws it at me so hard the zipper stings my right ear. She watches as I untie the bow at the back of my dress.

  The dress would be way too tight for Annmarie, but it fits me perfectly. I don’t like the tiny black dots on the dress, but the steamed pleats trace the line straight from the neck all the way down to the flared hem. The almost sheer outline has the look of a revival tent. When I twirl around really fast, the fabric flares up and I look like a ballerina clad in loud, sinful red. Annmarie looks like she wants to hit me. She kicks her right heel against the doorjamb. I silently exa
mine the little Peter Pan collar. I discover a tiny white smudge, no bigger than the nail on my little finger.

  Delano stands behind Annmarie, looking at me and picking at his cuticle. He says nothing, but his face is begging me not to do anything stupid. I know Annmarie does not want me to have the dress. I rub my thumb against the tiny stain. No one would ever see that little white mark, but I know it is there. The dress is red and pretty, but Annmarie’s face reminds me that it is still a piece of hand-me-down. I am tired of wearing things that other children have grown out of. I unzip the dress and let it fall to my ankles.

  Grandma nervously searches my face. I kick the dress and she raises her right hand to heaven. “Lord Jesus Almighty! This child ungrateful, eh?”

  Auntie Ella is kinder. “Staceyann Chin, this dress looks as if it was made for you!”

  “But it wasn’t made for me, Auntie Ella. It was made for Annmarie and you can see that she don’t want me to wear it!”

  Annmarie crosses her arms over her chest. “You are absolutely right. I don’t know why I have to give away that dress. It doesn’t even fit her right!”

  I kick the dress again. “I didn’t want it anyway! You can take back your stupid stain-up dress!”

  She stomps over to me and points her finger in my face. “My dress is not stupid! Is my favorite dress, and if you think it is stupid you definitely don’t deserve it!”

  “Annmarie, please take you finger out of my face before—”

  Auntie Ella steps between us. “Annmarie, be quiet! Stacey, it is getting late. You need to get dressed. Pick up this dress and put it on.”

  I straighten the waistband of my panties and fold my arms over my chest. Delano steps out onto the back veranda. Annmarie stoops and picks up the dress. “Mummy, she obviously does not want the dress. Can I go and put it back in the closet?”