Gumbo

by E. Lynn Harris

  After the funeral the well-meaning came to console and offer their dog-eared faith in the form of coconut cakes, potato pies, fried chicken, and tears. Ciel sat in the bed with her back resting against the headboard; her long thin fingers still as midnight frost on a frozen pond, lay on the covers. She acknowledged their kindnesses with nods of her head and slight lip movements, but no sound. It was as if her voice was too tired to make the journey from the diaphragm through the larynx to the mouth.

  Her visitors' impotent words flew against the steel edge of her pain, bled slowly, and returned to die in the senders' throats. No one came too near. They stood around the door and the dressing table, or sat on the edges of the two worn chairs that needed upholstering, but they unconsciously pushed themselves back against the wall as if her hurt was contagious.

  A neighbor woman entered in studied certainty and stood in the middle of the room. “Child, I know how you feel, but don't do this to yourself. I lost one, too. The Lord will . . .” And she choked, because the words were jammed down into her throat by the naked force of Ciel's eyes. Ciel had opened them fully now to look at the woman, but raw fires had eaten them worse than lifeless—worse than death. The woman saw in that mute appeal for silence the ragings of a personal hell flowing through Ciel's eyes. And just as she went to reach for the girl's hand, she stopped as if a muscle spasm had overtaken her body and, cowardly, shrank back. Reminiscences of old, dried-over pains were no consolation in the face of this. They had the effect of cold beads of water on a hot iron—they danced and fizzled up while the room stank from their steam.

  Mattie stood in the doorway, and an involuntary shudder went through her when she saw Ciel's eyes. Dear God, she thought, she's dying, and right in front of our faces.

  “Merciful Father, no!” she bellowed. There was no prayer, no bended knee or sackcloth supplication in those words, but a blasphemous fireball that shot forth and went smashing against the gates of heaven, raging and kicking, demanding to be heard.

  “No! No! No!” Like a black Brahman cow, desperate to protect her young, she surged into the room, pushing the neighbor woman and the others out of her way. She approached the bed with her lips clamped shut in such force that the muscles in her jaw and the back of her neck began to ache.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and enfolded the tissue-thin body in her huge ebony arms. And she rocked. Ciel's body was so hot it burned Mattie when she first touched her, but she held on and rocked. Back and forth, back and forth—she had Ciel so tightly she could feel her young breasts flatten against the buttons of her dress. The black mammoth gripped so firmly that the slightest increase of pressure would have cracked the girl's spine. But she rocked.

  And somewhere from the bowels of her being came a moan from Ciel, so high at first it couldn't be heard by anyone there, but the yard dogs began an unholy howling. And Mattie rocked. And then, agonizingly slow, it broke its way through the parched lips in a spaghetti-thin column of air that could be faintly heard in the frozen room.

  Ciel moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shone like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mother's arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water. She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers swept their children's entrails off laboratory floors. They flew past the spilled brains of Senegalese infants whose mothers had dashed them on the wooden sides of slave ships. And she rocked on.

  She rocked her into her childhood and let her see murdered dreams. And she rocked her back, back the womb, to the nadir of her hurt, and they found it—a slight silver splinter, embedded just below the surface of the skin. And Mattie rocked and pulled—and the splinter gave way, but its roots were deep, gigantic, ragged, and they tore up flesh with bits of fat and muscle tissue clinging to them. They left a huge hole, which was already starting to pus over, but Mattie was satisfied. It would heal.

  The bile that had formed a tight knot in Ciel's stomach began to rise and gagged her just as it passed her throat. Mattie put her hand over the girl's mouth and rushed her out the now-empty room to the toilet. Ciel retched yellowish-green phlegm, and she brought up white lumps of slime that hit the seat of the toilet and rolled off, splattering onto the tiles. After a while she heaved only air, but the body did not seem to want to stop. It was exorcising the evilness of pain.

  Mattie cupped her hands under the faucet and motioned for Ciel to drink and clean her mouth. When the water left Ciel's mouth, it tasted as if she had been rinsing with a mild acid. Mattie drew a tub of hot water and undressed Ciel. She let the nightgown fall off the narrow shoulders, over the pitifully thin breasts and jutting hipbones. She slowly helped her into the water, and it was like a dried brown autumn leaf hitting the surface of a puddle.

  And slowly she bathed her. She took the soap, and, using only her hands, she washed Ciel's hair and the back of her neck. She raised her arms and cleaned the armpits, soaping well the downy brown hair there. She let the soap slip between the girls breasts, and she washed each one separately, cupping it in her hands. She took each leg and even cleaned under the toenails. Making Ciel rise and kneel in the tub, she cleaned the crack in her behind, soaped her pubic hair, and gently washed the creases in her vagina—slowly, reverently, as if handling a newborn.

  She took her from the tub and toweled her in the same manner she had been bathed—as if too much friction would break the skin tissue. All of this had been done without either woman saying a word. Ciel stood there, naked, and felt the cool air play against the clean surface of her skin. She had the sensation of fresh mint coursing through her pores. She closed her eyes and the fire was gone. Her tears no longer fried within her, killing her internal organs with their steam. So Ciel began to cry—there, naked, in the center of the bathroom floor.

  Mattie emptied the tub and rinsed it. She led the still-naked Ciel to a chair in the bedroom. The tears were flowing so freely now Ciel couldn't see, and she allowed herself to be led as if blind. She sat on the chair and cried—head erect. Since she made no effort to wipe them away, the tears dripped down her chin and landed on her chest and rolled down to her stomach and onto her dark public hair. Ignoring Ciel, Mattie took away the crumpled linen and made the bed, stretching the sheets tight and fresh. She beat the pillows into a virgin plumpness and dressed them in white cases.

  And Ciel sat. And cried. The unmolested tears had rolled down her parted thighs and were beginning to wet the chair. But they were cold and good. She put out her tongue and began to drink in their saltiness, feeding on them. The first tears were gone. Her thin shoulders began to quiver, and spasms circled her body as new tears came—this time, hot and stinging. And she sobbed, the first sound she'd made since the moaning.

  Mattie took the edges of the dirty sheet she'd pulled off the bed and wiped the mucus that had been running out of Ciel's nose. She then led her freshly wet, glistening body, baptized now, to the bed. She covered her with one sheet and laid a towel across the pillow—it would help for a while.

  And Ciel lay down and cried. But Mattie knew the tears would end. And she would sleep. And morning would come.

  Fortune

  BY R. ERICA DOYLE

  Two doors down lives Fortune. She breathes in daybreak in black sarongs and flamboyant halter tops, orchids on her tongue. You watch her heave the gate open in the morning, trip-dance down the wooden steps to Morne Coco Road. The banana tree hides her for a moment, and your heart stops with her disappearance, starts again when her sandals clack on the street. The roosters crow before and behind her, hailing, “Fortune, ho ho, Fortune, ho ho.” Her dougla hair, that curly mass of Africa and India making love, caresses her shoulders, bounces down her back, winds itself over the straps of her red handbag. She has bangles like a garden of silver on her full golden arms.

  You stand in the doorwa
y with your tea, now cold, sip it with a grimace. Fortune comes even with your hungry stance, two points converging, two pairs of cocoa eyes meeting, and then she is past you, throwing you a hard-won “Good morning Yvette!” over her shoulder. Her round buttocks describe circles under the cotton. “Fortune is a woman could walk and win' at the same time,” Couteledge from down the road always said, “That what make them old hags tongue wag, can't stand no woman that age hard back and fete one time, no children no man to slow she down.” The chickens in your front yard raise their heads from the dust they've been scouring for corn and insects to watch her. She is the sun rising over the hill, then setting below it, lost from your sight.

  Something is pulling at the bottom of your short pants leg. You don't turn, know it is your little nephew, Selwyn, eighteen months old, awake and wanting breakfast. You wait. Two months now your sister, Dulce, send him from New York for you to raise. The child come walking, but ain't saying a word at first, only pointing and grabbing at things he want. To teach him you didn't answer those pulls, matched his silence with your own expectant stare, eyebrows raised into question marks, and smiling to show you not vexed, only waiting. Patience is one thing you always have. That and respect for few words. Finally he began to talk, say “Mek” for “Milk” and “Bah bah” for bottle or cup or ball or bath, and “Titi,” his name for you, when he don't know the word at all. You pick things up for him then, showcase fruit, food, and toys like the game show white lady on Miss Flora television until he know what he wants.

  “Titi?” says Selwyn, still pulling, but not too bad.

  You turn, crouch down to meet his luminous gray eyes, smile. You open your arms and he falls in, laughing. “Good morning, Sello darling.” His sweet still-baby smell of powder and coconut oil mix together, his fresh breath on your cheek.

  “G'mah nah Titi,” he replies.

  “Good boy! You hungry?”

  “Yesh, Titi!” He laughs at his own words, proud.

  You stand and he runs into the house in front of you. You are always surprised at how quickly he covers distances with that chubby duckwalk he have. Not that there is far to go in the small house, it only have two rooms, but he speeds through like a windup toy, and into everything like a little monkey. When the stewardess handed him to you in Piarco airport, you called the woozy and fearful child “Paw Paw Boy” to make him smile, for he was dense and yellow as a papaya, with a shock of reddish hair to match the fruit's insides.

  Selwyn climbs onto the seat you've stacked with newspapers to make him a high chair of sorts and fold his hands neatly on the table, ghost eyes shining.

  “I have some roast bake for you this morning,” you sing, holding up the iron skillet for him to see the bread round and solid within. “And some nice buljahl I make fresh fresh.”

  Selwyn giggles. His impossibly small teeth are like pearls between his pink lips. “Fwesh!”

  “Yes, my dear.” You place the bowl of codfish on the table next to the bake. “Uh-oh Sello—” you spread your hands wide in puzzlement. “One thing, one thing missing. What is it?” You place a finger on your forehead as if thinking, and his brow furrows to match. “Hmmm . . .”

  “Jooch!” cries Selwyn.

  “That's right my love, juice!” You take the plastic pitcher full of yellow juice from the narrow counter and put it on the table. “Now, what kind is it?”

  “Mmm,” says Sello, tapping his head with the palm of one tiny hand, “onch?”

  “Good guess, but it's not orange. Try again.”

  “Magoh?”

  “Mango is darker, love. Try again.”

  Selwyn thinks hard, then smiles and holds up one hand, fingers spread.

  “Right, my dear! Five-finger fruit. But you can say ‘star' if that's too too difficult. Can you say ‘star'?”

  “Shah.”

  “Very good. Now it's time to eat.”

  Selwyn claps his hands and sings one of his under-the-breath songs to himself, and you make him a small plate of bake and buljahl and pour some juice into his sippy cup, with its spout and two handles. You make some for yourself, and you both eat the salty fish and warm bread in silence.

  After breakfast, you clear the table and Selwyn clambers down from his chair. He toddles through the curtain separating the second room from the parlor and kitchen, and goes to pull the sheets around on the bed you both share to “make it up.” You rinse the plates in the sink, and put some water on to boil for his bath. This has become your routine, Fortune in the morning, breakfast with Sello, his bath, his toys and books, his nap, then wait for customers. He makes up the bed as the water boils and could probably do it for hours, until you call him. After his bath, you read to him from one of the books Dulce sent from America, and then sweep the kitchen while he plays in the bedroom with the puzzles and blocks Vilma just bring, also from Dulce. Books could be sent alone, but toys aren't likely to make it through customs “at all at all,” Vilma had said, shaking her head in a long suck-teeth. “Is only thief they thiefing in that customs you hear? Thief the only custom them damn fools accustom.”

  After Sello clean and sweet and diapers change, playing quiet in the bedroom, you sweep the kitchen and parlor floor until the wood planks sing under the old straw broom. Out go the clouds of dust through the back door, which reminds you to feed the parrot, small and green in the big aluminum cage your cousin Panchita bring it in. “I know you care for it,” she say to your sagging shoulders. “I found it on our mountain, I think the wing sore, and you know Mummy don't allow me to have no animal in the house.” Panchita's mother was a woman from town who kept their Diego Martin home spotless and free of nonhuman life with a variety of pesticides she got from her shopping trips to Miami. Even the chameleons didn't escape her, though one had conveniently, and appropriately you thought, died in one of her fancy leather shoes. Even today you couldn't see the parrot without remembering the sight of Auntie Maxine bouncing around on one foot while holding the other, toe enmeshed with crushed lizard, and squealing. And so, like Rex, the black puppy, and Pepper, the old cat, the little fellow joined your crew of creatures needing someone to watch them.

  You give the parrot some five-finger fruit and mango and some sunflower seeds. He whirls one black eye in your direction, still suspicious of your large brown figure. You run a hand through the short salt and pepper curls on your head and gesture toward the voluminous red-flowered shirt you are wearing, another gift from Dulce. Why she think you would wear a such a thing unless she give it, you don't know, but a gift is a gift. “See?” you tell the parrot. “I wearing my Sunday best only for you.” The parrot is unimpressed, but hops down to peck at the seeds, twirling them on his black tongue to crack them just so. You sigh and go back into the house where Selwyn is waiting in the parlor.

  “Chick? Chick?” he asks.

  “Yes my dear, time to feed the chickens.”

  He runs ahead, out the front door, down the slanted wooden steps to the chicken coops on the side of the house, under the banana trees. His bare feet send up clouds of dusts in his wake. When they see him coming the chickens begin a soft clucking that sounds like the purr of a rainstorm. Selwyn gets the feed from the side of the coop and grabs it in his small fists, flailing his arms, opening his hands at just the right moment. The hens swirl around him kicking up dust and tickling him with their feathers until the rooster comes from behind the house and sends them cackling and scurrying. As he starts to eat, they converge again, and you watch the cloud of copper and black feathers, the flash of red combs and black eyes, the golden red-haired child throwing food in their midst, laughing in the mid-morning sun.

  When the chickens are fed, Selwyn goes down for his nap. He climbs onto the bed flops down and watches as you push two pillows and some sofa cushions around him to make a small fortress. The first time he slept alone in the bed he'd fallen out three times before you realized that he just would not stay. You were amazed by that, that staying on the bed while sleeping was learned. To know where y
our surface edges were while unconscious, know boundaries in your dreams. So now you make this wall for him, so he'll be safe while you work. Sello snuggles down and watches until you back out through the curtain a finger on your lips to shush. When you check back before going out to the yard, his eyes are closed, thumb in his mouth with the index finger scratching the bridge of his nose gently.

  Today's customers are regulars: Mam Flora, Couteledge, Auntie Meiling and Shireen. They all buy one, two, or three chickens for the week, and take them live in a basket, except for Miss Merle, Auntie Maxine's neighbor from Diego Martin, who comes down to Petit Valley in a shiny car she always call her “automobile.” You send Cedrick, Miss Agnes' son from next door to fetch your cousin Ramon to wring the necks for her, as she too fancy to do it herself. While you wait for Ramon, Miss Merle stay in she car, playing classical music on the radio, to stimulate the brain she say. You stand quietly in the road near her, to be polite, though you don't like the way her beady eyes rove all over your cut-short pants and that flowered shirt Dulce send, with a look like you covered in cow shit or some such. She smile at you in a way those ladies do, when they about to slit your throat with they mako words, always in somebody business. Miss Merle and them can't stay silent in the presence of another human being, class notwithstanding, for very long.

  “So, Boysie, tell me Flora girl Fortune home from America come back to Petit Valley to live?”

  “Yes Mam, she living just there down the road.”

  “Oh ho, close close! All you must have a lot to talk about, America and thing.”

  You don't say anything. Fortune and you have not exchanged more than ten words since her return, but words and Fortune is something that don't mix. Fortune say, “Words ruin,” and then take your hands in hers and that was that.

  Miss Merle, seeing no reply forthcoming, continue. “Well, maybe not. I know your sister Dulce there in America making a very nice life for she self. Studying dentistry and everything. Is a a pity your poor mother bless her soul ain't live to see it. But all you doing real good. You have this little business take over from your father and Dulce in America going to be a doctor!” Well, dental assistant, but you don't bother to correct Miss Merle.