Iron Balloons

by Channer, Colin

  His sidekick chuckled. “I tell you, if skin color does bleed in water like cheap red cloth, it have a lot a people go jump in the water hoping that the red color stain out their black.”

  “Or the white bleach it!” the radio host roared.

  The Streeters were incensed. That black people—for they were certain the radio talk show host and his callers were black—would speak so disparagingly of their own kind in public, on the air, enraged and confounded them. They shot back with terse, angry statements that were printed in the press. If they were white, they contended, no one would have left the pool. Yes, perhaps they could have waited longer for the receptionist, but it was a very hot day and they had a note from the Ambassador. It was reasonable for them to conclude that when the receptionist finally arrived, it would be easy enough to show the note. But it was because they were black that the receptionist did not give them the courtesy of inquiring if they had permission to swim in the pool.

  Mr. Streeter went on to add that he was certain that many of the white people in the pool that day were foreigners who did not have membership in the club. But the management presumed, presumed, without any other evidence except skin color, that because those people were white they belonged in the pool, that they had to be guests of the members. He had no doubt that the receptionist was the one who sent out the alarm for the people to leave the pool.

  About the comic banter on the radio, Mr. Streeter said he was deeply hurt and disappointed in his black brothers and sisters. He expected more from people who had got their independence from the white colonial powers. He said he expected them to be as outraged as he was. He ended his interview with the reporter with a show of erudition. He was not a psychologist, he said, but he was an educated man. He read. And if his black brothers and sisters had read what one of their black brothers from another island had written, they would understand that they were still in prison, in the prison of their colonial minds. Read Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, he said, flinging out the words derisively at the reporter, who recorded them precisely. Try to improve yourselves.

  Never judge a book by its cover. Little children learn this adage with their ABCs. The Streeters heard none of the pain and frustration submerged beneath the jokes that crisscrossed the island all day. Had Mr. Streeter limited his criticism to the management of the Paradise Country Club and to the idiots who came out of the pool, the people would have trusted him. Eventually they would have admitted him into their circle, and he would have discovered how they had survived. How, through years of brutal slavery, how, though their island was used as the seasoning station before Africans were shipped to America, they had not merely survived but had excelled.

  They would have explained to Mr. Streeter what they meant by seasoning, assuming he would not understand. For they knew that in the big countries, people did not season their food before cooking it. That it was reputed they took raw chicken, just as it was in the package from the store, and cooked it like that without chive and thyme and lime and garlic and so on. So unless they explained seasoning, the Streeters would not understand how you could season a man or woman and change people’s smell and their taste so that when they reached America, they would behave just so. They would plant cotton, haul wood, fetch water, and you would only have to add a little salt and black pepper to get them to remember how the red pepper and green onion and lime used to cut through their open wounds.

  If the Streeters knew what went on at the seasoning station, they would understand that you had to be strong, you had to be smart, smarter than the seasoners themselves, to outfox them. You had to know how to cover up your own taste and your own smell, so though they rub you down with garlic and shado beni, and on the outside you smelling like you seasoned, on the inside you haven’t changed at all. You still the same thing. You still the same original man, the same original woman.

  But Mr. Streeter had presumed to know more about them than they knew about themselves. He had taken it upon himself to be their teacher and to give them advice. So they concluded that he was like every other foreigner—never mind he was black—who thought he was better, superior to them, who looked at the sun and sea and reached the same conclusion: This was a playground, home to light-headed men and frivolous women.

  And it was true that the island was like a playground. The sun shone brightly almost every day, bathing the trees in flashes of gold. And they never had those hurricanes that devastated the other islands, for the island was situated in the doldrums, neither too far nor too near the equator, between those latitudes where the winds died down and the ocean subsided. A playground indeed: long, white beaches at the base of thick, verdant hills. Sky bluer than the sea and sea blue as the veil on the statue of the Virgin Mary on the side altar of the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Clouds most of the time whiter than the alabaster statues of those white Catholic saints. If God had planned to design a playground where people could relax and be happy, He could have created no better.

  But people spoiled it. People from the cold places in the North. First, they killed the fighting Caribs and infected the peaceful Arawaks with their nasty diseases. Next, they dragged the Africans over in chains and seasoned them. When they had used up the Africans, they seduced the Indians and Chinese with promises of land for labor. Then they abused them too. It took two world wars to stop them. After that, there was nothing else for the people to do but to make a callaloo.

  All ah we is one. But everybody knew where his place was in that straight line of one.

  Things eventually got so out of hand with statements and counterstatements from Mr. Streeter and the management of the Paradise Country Club appearing daily in the newspaper, with the radio waves virtually cackling as hosts and callers tried to outdo each other with their witty remarks, with everyone, even children, seeming to have an opinion, that on the fourth day, when calypsonians began to sing about “the commotion on an island in the ocean” and “black stool in the pool,” the Prime Minister was forced to intervene.

  Black stool in the pool! It was the last straw for the Streeters. The calypso was a perfect example of self-loathing, Mr. Streeter declared. Those calypsonians were calling themselves shit, for to be sure, their skin was as black as his. So the Prime Minister got together with the U.S. Ambassador to work out a solution. He would put on a good island fête, the Prime Minister said. He would invite African, Indian, Chinese, English, Portuguese, Lebanese, Syrian, French Creole, all kinds of mixed-up people. He would show the Streeters “how well we all get along.”

  The Prime Minister chose to host his party at 4 in the afternoon and at the home of a friend who lived on the top of a hill, not far from the main city. He decided his residence was too formal and might inhibit the free expression of his guests, causing them not to mingle with each other in the way that would prove to the Americans that on his island, All ah we is one. He selected this particular house for many reasons, not the least of which was that to get it, the Streeters would have to pass through a winding road bounded on both sides with new residential developments, some of which were in the beginning stages. He wanted the Streeters to arrive in sufficient daylight so that they would witness firsthand the industry of his people, who were often maliciously castigated as lazy good-for-nothings. He knew that if the Streeters had woken up before dawn and gone into the main town, they would have seen the flurry of activity that took place there every workday morning, a curious pantomime barely lit by the rising sun: men, women, children moving rapidly, with concentrated determination, almost without sound, except for low murmurs and the beat of shoes against the concrete pavement. They would have seen polished-faced children dressed in starched school uniforms, boys in khaki pants, blue shirts, and ties; girls in white blouses, pleated skirts, and socks above blinding-white sneakers. They would have seen workers in their company uniforms, professionals in dark suits, and yes, they would have seen all sorts of people of varying degrees of African ancestry as well as Indians, Chinese, English, Portuguese, Lebanese
, Syrians, and French Creoles.

  But the Prime Minister did not think it was likely that the Streeters would find themselves at the heart of the city at dawn, so he orchestrated this sampling of his island’s population at his fête, and instructed the driver, who was to bring the Streeters to his friend’s home, to point out the finished houses along the way and the ones under construction. He wanted the Americans to know that the island had its own architects, engineers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and construction workers, and that most of the raw material they used—paint, cement, bricks, slate, corrugated zinc, wrought iron, tiles, nails—were manufactured in local factories.

  The Prime Minister wanted the Streeters to know this and to be at the house when the sun came down, for he wanted to see if they would not be awed to silence when the sun spread fire across the sky and bloodied the sea below it. When from the front lawn of his friend’s house they would look down on the panorama of his city—roofs descending like scales on fish, one after the other, to a green savannah and afterward the sea, blue stretching lazily across the horizon before the sun turned it red.

  “Let me hear what they have to say then,” the Prime Minister said to his wife, as he dressed for the redemptive fête.

  And his wife reminded him that the house, too, was something to see. It was designed by a brilliant woman, a lawyer, with more talent than she had time, who, between teaching and writing books on the law, studied the architecture of the old Victorian houses that the English colonists had built with alcoves and eaves and fanciful lacy fretwork, and the spreading homes on the plantations of the French Creoles, with their wide verandas and elegant windows that opened to the floor, and the tapia-roofed houses of the Indian farmers, and the wooden structures on stilts the Africans had made. She had incorporated all these designs into her own unique vision so that the house she designed retained the memory of all that had transpired on the island, all that had brought happiness, but suffering too, to this place bathed by the sun.

  “Don’t forget to tell them it was a black woman who designed the house,” the Prime Minister’s wife said to him.

  And all went well as the Prime Minister had planned it.

  On their way to the house, as the Streeters passed the new homes and the ones under construction, they got a lesson on the industry and talent of the islanders. At the house, they found themselves struggling for words to compliment the owners, overwhelmed by the magnificent wide verandas on the top and bottom floors, framed by ornate wrought iron reminiscent of Victorian fretwork; stunned by the lush, round baskets of green ferns hanging down from the ceilings of the verandas and contrasting splendidly with the red clay color of the outer walls of the house. Inside, the designer, the female lawyer, had chosen a palette of tropical hues hinting at the splendor of birds, flowers, and fish to be found on the island. When the sun began to descend and paint the sky in oranges and reds, the Streeters were pulled, like the rest of the party, to the edge of the lawn so they could look down and across, down to where fish scales glinted in the dying flames and across to where the sea surrendered its blues.

  Afterward, when the Prime Minister determined the Streeters were sufficiently impressed, he gathered Indian, Chinese, English, Portuguese, Lebanese, Syrian, French Creole, and all the earth tones of African ancestry around the Olympic-size swimming pool at the back of the house. As soon as his aides had quieted the crowd, he began what Mr. and Mrs. Streeter considered an apology, but what their teenage daughter, Linda, flouncing down on their bed that night, still smarting from the insult to her family, described as nothing less than “a vulgar display of West Indian arrogance meant to dazzle our eyes and befuddle our brains into submission.”

  This is what the Prime Minister said.

  “Mango—or from your part of the world—apple,” he began, smiling broadly at the Streeters, “don’t fall far from the tree, but in your case, I have to say the mango fell and went far beyond the tree.”

  A loud tittering erupted among the guests, and if Mr. and Mrs. Streeter did not understand the Prime Minister immediately, it was soon clear to them that he was doing his best to compliment their daughter. She was, he said, the most beautiful flower ever to grace the garden of his island.

  Having achieved his objective of “lightening up the situation,” the Prime Minister then rhapsodized on the colors to be found on his island. He spoke of the hues of the tropical rainbow, the colors of the different birds, big and small, singing birds and birds that never sang a song. When the ibises come home to roost in the Caroni swamp, he boasted, they turn the trees red with their feathers. He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out the note his wife had given him, and as if he were an expert on tropical horticulture, he reeled off descriptions of the flowers she had written down—poinsettia, hibiscus, chaconia, bougainvillea, anthurium, lily, oleander, ixora, amaryllis, bird of paradise. Finally, with a politician’s sixth sense that he was losing his audience, he extended his arms, and spreading them wide open as if to embrace the entire room, pointed out to the Streeters the array of skin colors before him, ending with a line from the island’s national anthem: “Here every creed and race find an equal place.”

  “So, if,” he said, “some misguided persons gave the Streeters the impression that on this island we discriminate against our brothers and sisters because their race is different from ours, we apologize. We are truly sorry. For here, as you can see, we have all colors living together in harmony, from black to white, from Indian to Chinese, from English to African, from Portuguese to French Creole, from Syrian and Lebanese to Jew. Yes, Jew,” he said. “When the rest of the world refused to take the Jews, though it was common knowledge what Hitler was doing with them in the concentration camps, our island nation took every last one who came to us asking for shelter.” Neglecting to clarify that us were the English colonists, the Prime Minister then concluded, “This is the kind of people we are. Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Streeter, you can’t find any place in the world where people are less prejudiced. So I say we’re sorry, and on behalf of the entire country, I hope you come to visit us again.”

  Applause. The steel band the Minister of Culture had recommended, following the Prime Minister’s lead “to show the Streeters what we can do,” and in keeping with the island’s unofficial motto “to lighten up the situation,” burst into a brisk rendition of the road march from the last year’s Carnival.

  But the Streeters’s daughter, Linda, was not persuaded. At her insistence, her father had arranged for the McShines to be invited to the party. She had observed that Moira was the last person to leave the pool and she wanted a witness at the party. When the Prime Minister ended his speech, she walked over to Moira.

  “If,” Linda sneered. “If? Well, you were there. You know there are no ifs and buts about what happened.”

  Moira stammered an apology. “People don’t usually behave like that,” she said.

  Linda smiled grimly. “And do dark-skinned people like me and my parents usually come to your pool? Or do they only let in black people with light skin like you. Colorism,” she said, before turning away, “is the disease that has infected your island. Come to the U.S. We have discovered the cure.”

  THE ANGER MERIDIAN

  by Kaylie Jones

  Saturday, 8:30 a.m.

  Inever wrote a word in this pretty hand-woven Mexican notebook that Mom gave me last Christmas almost a whole year ago, because I was afraid Stony would find it. Now he’s dead.

  I’m glad you’re dead. There.

  Eight years I spent in this marriage. Stony’s first marriage lasted six months, and apparently the divorce was quite the scandal in certain Dallas circles (his ex was a cattle baron’s daughter) and he intended to make this one work, no matter what.

  I’m not from the area and I guess that was a big plus for me in Stony’s estimation. We got engaged at Le Cirque in New York City. I was teaching French in a fancy private school in the city, and Stony often had business with Wall Street firms.


  When I opened the black box and saw the ring—it looked like a frozen pond, I swear—I thought, Mom will be so happy.

  “So, will you marry me?” he asked. My mouth opened on an intake of breath, and his cell phone rang. He took it out of his pocket, flipped it open, leaned back, and began to talk in a rapid tone of good humor, as if he were sitting behind his big glass desk in his office in Dallas. I waited patiently while he worked out a deal on a high rise and his eyes turned strangely luminous, a look I associate with the manly activity of closing in on prey. By the time he slapped his phone shut and turned his attention back to me, his eyes had slipped out of focus, as if he’d forgotten where he was.

  I’d barely gotten my quiet “Yes, Stony, I’ll marry you” out when he laid out his two deal-breakers: one, that he’d never get divorced again as long as he lived no matter how bad it got; two, that if ever he didn’t come home in time for dinner, I shouldn’t expect him to call because sometimes things got away from him at work, like when he was playing golf with a prospective client. Little did I know that people in Dallas take their golf extremely seriously, and sometimes the golf talk, after the golf itself, goes on until the wee hours of the morning.

  This is a man who can’t take a shower without his cell phone lying within arm’s reach, on the black granite slab surrounding the two sinks. A man whose cell phone rings while he’s proposing. And he can’t call me to tell me he’ll be late for dinner?

  I should have known. I should have folded up my pretty linen Le Cirque napkin, placed it neatly on the table, and said, “No, thank you,” and walked right out. But Mom would’ve never forgiven me. She’d been waiting for this moment for so long. Imagine me, the klutz, landing a millionaire entrepreneur with a law degree from UVA! I couldn’t wait to call her.

  The first thing she wanted to know was how much the ring cost. I had no idea how much the ring cost, and told her so. This made her angry for some reason. She went all quiet like she does, and that is no fun when you’re calling long-distance to San Marcos, Mexico, and the phone is crackling and you think you may have been cut off.