Pynter Bender

by Jacob Ross

  Once, her hand had paused against his face and he could hear her breathing. ‘You’z a real pretty boy,’ she said. ‘You should see yourself one day.’

  Those last few words had made it easier for him.

  ‘Plants,’ she said, ‘carry in their sap, their bark, their roots, their leaves, the answer to every livin sickness in a yooman been. Some know what should be in a person blood and what don’ ought to be in dere. Some unnerstan de skin. Some have knowledge of de eye. Same way y’have heart doctor and eye doctor, y’have plant that carry the exact same unnerstandin. In fact, sometimes a pusson get to thinkin that God make tree and den tree make we.’

  She fed him light the way she fed him fruits, slowly and in fragments. She took the bandages off at night and brought him out into the yard. She showed him where the stars were, the dark unsteady rise of trees, the dizzying slope of hills and the patterns they made against the paler sky. She made him watch a full moon rise until his head began to throb.

  It was raining when she first took him outside during the day. Through the thick white haze, she stretched out her finger at shapes and places and said their names to him. Mardi Gras Mountain, tall and dark, pushing its head up through the mists way beyond his vision, at whose feet Old Hope River flowed. The cane fields of Old Hope, whose sighs and whisperings he knew so well. The houses were brown pimples against the green of the hillside, his own home hidden behind a tall curtain of glory cedar trees.

  They were sitting on a stone above the valley. He was feeding himself on guavas – the glistening white-fleshed type which smelled of a much gentler perfume than the pink-fleshed ones. She pointed down at the canes and showed him gauldins skimming with outstretched wings above the green surf of the canes. He watched them wheel and settle on the topmost branches of the bamboos that fenced the river in, and he remembered something Tan Cee had told him when the skin still covered his eyes and he’d asked her what the world was like.

  ‘De world is life; and life is de world,’ she told him. ‘S’like dis room, but it so big-an’-wide it ain’t got no wall around it. An’ it carry millions an’ millions an’ millions of other living things inside itself. De world is like dat – an’ dat’s just a little piece of it.’

  ‘Miss Santay,’ he said, softly, hopefully. ‘I – I don’t want to dead.’

  His words swung Santay round to face him. The scarf on her head was a throbbing yellow. It framed a face so dark he could barely see her features. She looked down at him and his heart began to race.

  ‘My granmodder … Deeka, say I dead soon,’ he explained, looking down on the rain-swept canes, the birds fluttering above them like a host of living lilies. ‘When I reach ten, she say.’

  ‘If that granmodder of yours have she way, everybody dead soon.’

  Santay lowered herself onto her haunches and placed a hand on his shoulder. She felt different from every person who had ever touched him. In all the time he had been with her, he’d never heard her laugh. She moved so silently, as if she did not dare to disturb the air.

  ‘Listen, sonny, I don’ know what your people make you out to be. Talk reach me that you have to be one of de Old Ones come again – Zed What’s-iz-name again …? On account of the way you born. And lookin at dem eyes o’ yours, I not so sure they wrong. But …’ She got up suddenly, went inside the house and returned with a sheet of plastic and threw it over him. She told him he would spend the day out there and watch the way night came.

  When it was too dark to see the valley any more she called him in and made him change his clothes. He was shivering by then – shivering and hungry.

  ‘Eat,’ she said, placing a plate of fried fish and bread in his hands. She sat on the small table before him, her elbows almost touching his. ‘Now tell me what happm, Osan.’ It was the name that she had given him.

  ‘Tell you …?’

  ‘’Bout dis fella you s’pose to be.’

  He was surprised she did not know the story. Everybody knew it, even Miss Lizzie. The story was always there, even when no one was telling it, there in his grandmother’s eyes whenever she turned her gaze on him. Perhaps she knew but she wanted to hear it from him.

  He chewed the bread and stared at her uncertainly. He swallowed and closed his eyes.

  ‘My auntie, Tan Cee, say the cane was always there – the cane and us. She say we come with the cane. A pusson got to count a lot of generation back till dem reach Sufferation Time, when we didn belong to weself, because de man who own de cane own de people too.’

  He lifted his head in incomprehension. Santay nodded slightly.

  ‘Had a fella name Zed Bender. He didn feel he belong to nobody, but in truth he belong to a man name Bull Bender. Bull Bender had a lotta dog. He teach dem to hunt people down. He teach dem to rip off de back of deir leg when he catch dem. If is a woman, he bring ’er back. But he never bring back a man.

  ‘It happm one day Zed Bender decide to run ’way with a girl name Essa. She was pretty an’ he like ’er bad, real bad. He like ’er so bad he wasn’ ’fraid o’ nothing o’ nobody. He run ’way with her. Bull Bender catch ’im – catch ’im …’ He lifted his eyes past Santay, frowned, shook his head and pointed where he thought the purple mass of the Mardi Gras might be. ‘Up dere.’ Cross dere it have a tree. S’big. It got root like wall. Part of it like a lil house. It got a lotta little bird in dere. Dey ain’ got no feather on dem. It don’ smell nice in dere eider. Missa Bull Bender catch dem dere after de dog tear off de back of Zed Bender leg.’

  He placed the bit of bread he was holding on the table and looked at her. He was tired. Wasn’t hungry any more. He wanted to sleep.

  ‘Finish,’ she told him quietly.

  ‘He put hi back against one of dem wall root. He want to stand up. He make ’imself stand up cuz he want to watch Bull Bender in hi eye – like a man in front of a man. Bull Bender tell ’im to kneel down. He won’ do it. He tell Bull Bender if he have to kill ’im, den he have to do it with ’im standin up. He tell ’im dat he put a curse on him an’ all hi famly, an’ de seed of all hi famly to come. He dead. Dead real vex. He tell Bull Bender that is come he goin come back. Don’ know when, but he goin come back, and when he come back … ’

  Pynter looked away. ‘I don’ know, don’ know what goin to happm when he come back. Nobody never tell me dat part.’

  Santay brought the heel of her hand up against his eyes, so softly he barely felt it. ‘You cryin,’ she said.

  He watched her move across the floor towards the back door in that quick, whispery way of hers. She stood there and sniffed the air. The rain outside had stopped and he could hear the rising-up of the night-time bush sounds. He heard her call his name.

  ‘Come, look down dere.’ She was pointing at the black hole that was Old Hope Valley. He saw showers of lights stippling the darkness below them. ‘Firefly,’ she said. ‘Never seen so much in one night.’

  While he watched and marvelled, she turned her gaze on him. ‘Dat tree up dere, de one where dat young-fella get kill, your auntie tell you dat part too?’

  He stared back at her, said nothing.

  ‘Well,’ she said, turning back to face the night, ‘sound to me like dis Zed Bender fella had a real mind of hi own. You don’ fink so? The way I figure it, if he decide to make someting happm, den is happm it goin to happm. It cross my mind dat if he really come again an’ he decide he don’ want to go back, nobody kin make ’im go until he damn-well ready. A pusson have to ask demself a coupla question though. Like why he come back now, an’ whether he come back alone. Cuz dat lil Essa Bender lady he run ’way with the first time was sure to meet ’im up again – in the end, I mean. Love like dat can’t dead. An’ if she loss ’im once, she not goin to loss ’im twice. She goin want to follow ’im. An’ if what them say ’bout you is true, your brodder should ha’ been a girl.’

  She switched her head back round to face him. ‘So! Let’s say dat girl come back with him – mebbe different passageway – and she somewhere on
dis island, what you think goin happm if dey meet up?’

  He looked at her, but she did not seem to expect an answer. She got up and tightened the knot of the cloth on her head.

  ‘Well, I figure she come to take ’im back. I figure dat she not good for ’im. Come, catch some sleep. Tomorrow I take you home.’

  2

  HOME WAS THE yard his grandfather had blasted out of rocks. It was a hill above the road that no one had found a use for until John Seegal claimed it for himself. Ten years it took her husband, Deeka Bender said, ten solid years to break through the chalk and granite with dynamite, crowbars and sledgehammers.

  The work was as simple as it was breathtaking. With every girl-child he gave Deeka, he carved out a place where one day they would build their house. He went further up the hill each time a girl-child came. As if he knew that they would never leave his place. Or perhaps it was his way of tying them to this rock above Old Hope Road. Or maybe it was just his way of making sure his words came true.

  And what were those words? Deeka splayed her fingers wide and laughed: that no man alive would ever rule his women. He said it when Tan Cee, their first girl-child, was born; said it again when Elena arrived a couple of dry seasons after her; said those very same words a final time when Patty the Pretty was born.

  For Birdie – the only boy – he made no place at all. He told Deeka something different. ‘Man,’ he said, ‘have to make a way for himself.’

  He wasn’t thinking about Birdie when he laid a nest of stones in the middle of the yard to make a fireplace. Or when he perched the great metal cauldron he’d brought from the sugar factory on three boulders, under the ant-blighted grapefruit tree which he’d planted with his hands. He put it there for the times they would need to feed a wedding or celebrate a birth, or when, just for the hell of it, one of the women decided to clear out the leaves, fill it with water and toss the children in.

  It was the only thing he ever built, because all his life he had been paid to pull things down. Used to be the person the government called to blow up hills and buildings. Old bridges too; or when, during the rainy season, the face of one of those mountains on the western coast broke off and, on its way down to the sea, flattened every living thing in its wake, including people foolish enough to put their houses there. He was the one they sent for to clear the mess. Once he blew up the house of a man Deeka had worked for as a servant girl for the liberty he’d taken with her.

  No wonder then, that in the eyes of lil children and a lot of foolish wimmen, her husband, John Seegal Bender, was the nearest thing to God, since with a little red box and a coupla pieces of wire, he could make thunder.

  He’d built his house with storms in mind. A kind of ark on thirty legs, it half stood, half leaned against the high mud bank, which was, in turn, reinforced by the roots of a tres-beau mango tree. The posts were cut from campeche wood, chopped down at the end of the dry season, just before the new moon, since the blood-red core was hardest then.

  He’d rebuilt the house in ’51, the year before he ‘walked’. Four years before Hurricane Janet pulled the island apart, lifted most of what people were living in and flung them at the Mardi Gras a thousand feet above them.

  The house had grown since then, in various directions and according to its own fancy, to accommodate the swelling family. Elena added a couple of rooms to the west side with the money that, in Deeka’s words, Manuel Forsyth’s conscience had given her when Peter and Pynter were born. And because the house could not decide in which direction it wanted to lean, different parts leaned different ways.

  They called it home because, although Patty and Tan Cee had their own places, John Seegal’s was the one in which the family always gathered.

  Deeka Bender ruled it with her presence, especially those evenings over dinner when she chose to talk about John Seegal. Theirs had been the greatest love story in the world, she boasted. And whether they wanted t’hear it or not, she was going to tell them. These days they watched her more than listened: for the way her own words changed her, and how the white mass of hair, let loose like an unruly halo round her head, threw back the firelight. How the long brown face, the cheekbones and nose – high-ridged like the place from which she came – was alive once more. They watched and marvelled at the miracle of those fingers, thin and knotted like the branches of sea grapes, becoming supple and young again.

  She was a north-woman, and when a pusson say north-woman they mean a woman with pride. And Deeka Bender was prouder still, becuz she carry the blood of de First People: Carib blood, thick-hair-long-like-lapite blood, high-steppin, tall-walkin blood. And in them days Deeka walked taller than everybody else, no matter how high they was above her.

  ‘But what God leave for a pretty young girl to do in a lil ole place sittin on the edge of a precipice over de ocean? Eh? Especially when she don’ want to live and dead like everybody else up dere with no accountin fo’ the life she live. And life for a woman in those days could mean just movin out, knowin a lil bit o’ de world, hearin different voices an’ seein whether everybody cry or laugh the same way. It wasn’ askin much, but it mean a lot.

  ‘It so happm that one day news reach me that Missa John Defoe’s wife want a servant girl,’ Deeka said. ‘Defoe was a big Béké man who own the coconut plantation an’ most other plantation you find round there. Everybody work for Defoe because it don’t have no work apart from the work that Béké fella have to give. And for poor people girl-chile with a lil bit of ambition it was a good position to start from. So ’twasn’ a nice thing to come home six months after, bawling like hell wid me pride mash down an’ bleedin becuz dat man grab hold of me in de back o’ de kitchen, tell me he will kill me if I make a sound for hi white-’ooman-wife-from-Englan’ to hear ’im. And den, well, he take advantage of my situation. Make it worse, nobody couldn do nothing ’bout it becuz, like I tell y’all, everybody work for Defoe, including my own father.

  ‘Must ha’ been a week after I decide to go back kind of meek and quiet to that man house. People find it kinda funny. My fadder who never go anywhere widout hi couteau – his special kind o’ knife he use for openin lambie – even he was more surprise than everybody else. An’ that was kinda funny becuz he leave dat knife right on de little table in de room where I used to sleep. Still, you should see de shock on hi face when I tell dem I goin back to John Defoe house.

  ‘I went back to de kitchen same way, and start doin de cookin and de washin same way, and sure enough I see ’im throwin eyes at me.’

  A soft throaty laugh escaped her.

  ‘It don’t have a woman who don’ know how to stop a man. For good. Most woman don’ know dey know. But I know. I know it from since I was a girl bathin under the same standpipe with my little brothers. You see, lil girls not de same as lil boys. Y’all tink you know dat, right?’

  She’d turned her eyes on the men: Patty the Pretty’s man-friend, Leroy, Tan Cee’s husband, Coxy Levid – deep-eyed and always with a cigarette and a small smile on his lips, and Gordon and Sloco, who had come to have a couple of quiet words with Coxy.

  ‘Well, y’all don’t, becuz you don’ know what I going to tell y’all in a minute. You see, lil girls don’ see what lil boys got. Dey see what lil boys got to lose. Is something I learn from early.’

  The visitors shifted on their seats.

  ‘Y’all think that is that lil dumplin’ y’all got that rule the world. So y’all use it like a gun, like a nail, like a stone, like something y’all got to shame woman with. Y’all hear say that God is a man and God have one, an’ dat give y’all de right to rule woman de way God rule de world. Well, fellas, I got news for y’all. Me – Deeka Bender – I have a cure for God.’

  Coxy placed a cigarette between his lips, struck a match and lit it. Held the burning stick up before his eyes while the flame chewed its way down to his fingers. The fire fluttered there a while, like an injured butterfly just above his nails, and then went out.

  It was the way Deeka told the
se stories, the events the same, the messages different every time. It might be about daughters who disappeared in secret and returned home with children whose fathers they refused to name, in which case her eyes would keep returning to Elena. Or her tongue might rest and remain briefly on the sorts of women who married themselves in secret and who, for some sin known only to themselves, hadn’t given any children to the world. This time the bony shoulders would be turned away from Tan Cee, for this daughter’s tongue was quieter than hers, her temper very, very slow to wake. But when it did, it knew no respect or boundary.

  The first time Patty brought Leroy to the yard she spoke about girl children who came home with their men, locked themselves up in their bedrooms with them for days, doing what she just could not imagine. She was beautiful then – beautiful and terrible – with the firelight sparkling those dark north-woman eyes, her voice so high and clear it seemed to come from a different person altogether.

  ‘In fact, I always believe dat what Delilah cut from Samson wasn’ no long hair from hi head. But y’see, de Bible not a rude book. Missa Moses find another way to say it, an’ so dem call it hair. But I tellin y’all dat is not no dam hair dat she take ’way from dat Samson fella. Anyway, I spend eight months in jail for de damage I do Defoe and it would ha’ been longer – p’raps me whole life – if I wasn’ carryin proof o’ de liberty he take with me. I was six months pregnant wid dat man chile when I walk out o’ Edmund Hill Prison. I wasn’ going back home. I know dat from de time the warders open de gate and left me standin outside in the hot sun. I walk down dat road with a lil cloth bag in me hand and a coupla wuds in me head dat a man lef ’ with me almost a year before I got in trouble. You see, de time I was workin fo’ John Defoe, dis fella used to come buy dynamite becuz dat Béké man was de only one allow to sell it on de islan’. I used to watch ’im from de kitchen without ’im noticing. I s’pose ’twas because I never see a man like ’im before. Most times a fella come to Defoe he stay outside the gate. But this fella walk right in. He put hi hand on hi waist and look round him, like a surveyor. Big fella, strong fella – the kinda man God build to last.