A Million Aunties

by Alecia McKenzie

  In the car, Brandon turned on the radio, and Marley’s voice filled the space, asking for the “teachings of His Majesty.” They listened to the music, hardly exchanging a word until they reached Kaya Bay.

  * * *

  Chris was still in a sombre mood when he left Miss Della at her cousins’ house and went to visit Uncle Alton that evening. He was surprised to find that the old man now lived alone. Somehow he’d been expecting, unreasonably, to see Lola bounding out to meet him and to hear Auntie Connie’s nasal greeting. But the only constant was the chairs, still too many of them, on the verandah with the now peeling paint, and in the living room.

  “Connie passed two years ago. I sent a letter to your mother . . . I didn’t realise . . .” he trailed off, his eyes watery.

  Chris wondered if his father had received the notification. He hadn’t said anything about it, and anyway, Chris had never envisaged seeing Uncle Alton again.

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” Uncle Alton said after a pause. “I never expected her to go before me. We all should have kept in better touch, but everybody gets so caught up in the daily grind. I felt something was wrong when the Christmas cards stopped coming.” He slapped Chris gently on the back. “It’s good to see you, though. Come, let’s eat. And tell me about yourself.”

  Chris followed him into the dining room where a massive portrait of Aunt Connie nearly filled one wall, her bright face and smile welcoming them.

  “That took me nearly a year to finish,” Uncle Alton said, as Chris looked at the painting before sitting down. “It was hard.”

  His housekeeper had prepared fried chicken and rice and peas, with slices of tomato and avocado on the side. She came for two hours every day, except Sunday, he said, then she took the bus back home.

  “Yes, thank goodness for Miss Sandra. She takes good care of me,” he rasped. “You know how old I am now?”

  Chris shook his head, not wanting to guess a figure higher than the reality.

  “Eighty-one,” Uncle Alton laughed. “That’s old, right? But I was the youngest in the family—the little brother of your mother’s mother. You know what the worst thing about being the youngest is?” He didn’t give Chris a chance to reply. “Well, if you’re in good health, you just see everybody dying off before you. But I’d hoped Connie would outlast me, even though she was a year older.”

  Chris nodded sympathetically. He hadn’t told the old man anything about his own life and didn’t plan to. “What happened to Lola?” he said instead.

  “Oh, she lived to a ripe old age, in dog’s terms. Fifteen, I think. But she got blind in the last year and it really changed her personality. She became so quiet and withdrawn, not the bouncy Lola you met when you came. We did everything to make her feel comfortable, though. Then one day, somebody who visited left the damn gate open, and she wandered out into the street. She couldn’t see the car, of course.” Uncle Alton shook his head and sighed.

  After dinner, he asked if Chris wanted to see his studio and paintings. The room was in the back of the house, which got the full morning sun, Uncle Alton said. Stacks of canvases leant against the wall and the first impression Chris had was of dozens of women staring at him. Uncle Alton took one up—a portrait of a white-haired woman with wide, bold eyes.

  “That’s my mother, your great-grandmother,” he said as he handed Chris the painting. “Last year, I decided to paint all the women in the family, and anyone who had any kind of impact on my life, and I’m rushing to finish everything before my time comes.”

  His style was rough, with the features of his subject exaggerated. It was clear he’d relied on his memory and not a photograph. The woman’s face had a liveliness as if she were about to tell an amusing anecdote.

  “She was full of stories,” Uncle Alton said, guessing his thoughts. “And this is your grandmother. One of my two sisters and you mother’s mother. As you know, when she drowned, your mother went to America to stay with Veronica, my other sister, after the funeral and everything.”

  Chris didn’t know. He stared at Uncle Alton. “What? She drowned? I thought she’d been ill.” He felt stupid for asking.

  “Nobody ever told you? Yes, we think she just decided to end it. Just decided to swim away to freedom from the pain, you know. She did it the day after your mother’s high-school exams. I guess she wanted to see her through. But she was in such a bad state by then, in so much pain.”

  “And Mom, how did she deal with it?”

  “You must know your mother has always been a practical person. I think she understood. She and I took care of all the arrangements. She cried once—sounds I never want to hear again—and then she was okay. I think.”

  Uncle Alton gazed at the painting, and Chris examined it too, noting the woman’s resemblance to his mother and the dress she was wearing. It was dark green with tiny red poppies that had been painstakingly painted, a contrast with the rough technique elsewhere.

  “And what about my mom’s dad? Wasn’t he around?”

  “Oh, him.” Uncle Alton burst out laughing, then sighed. “We lost count of the number of women and pickney he had. Somebody said it went up to forty. So, you have a lot of relatives scattered around the island. But he always said your mother was his favourite, until he disappeared when she was about nine or ten. Just went off to England, and if my sister got two letters she got plenty. Remember when you came here as a boy? Well, he had come back from Birmingham, like a lot of these retirees from England coming home now. And somehow he managed to get in touch with your mother. He built a big house in Mandeville. I don’t know if you remember that she left you with us one day while she went to see him. He gave her five hundred pounds, she told me, and said the house would be hers when he died. As far as I know, he’s still there in Mandeville. Maybe you can visit him?”

  Chris didn’t know what to reply. His mother had never spoken of her father, and he had no wish to acquire a grandfather, or any other relatives. He breathed in deeply and leant the canvas back against the wall. He’d listened to enough disclosures for the evening. He made as if to leave the studio, but Uncle Alton had picked up another canvas.

  “This is your grand-aunt. You must recognize her.”

  He nodded, smiled briefly. Aunt Veronica in Firenze. With her white husband who had chosen to be black. She had travelled up for his mother’s funeral, shaky and frail. He should go and see her at some point, when he got back. And his father’s sisters too, Aunt Ella and Aunt Doreen. He wished he’d been better about keeping in touch.

  “And this is your mother.”

  Chris drew in another deep breath as he looked at the old man’s rendering of her face. The shining chocolate eyes. The wide yet shy smile. He’d made her teeth too big though.

  “Yes,” Uncle Alton said. “If I’d had a daughter, I would’ve wanted her to be just like your mother. How bout you? Any children yet?”

  Chris smiled tightly. All at once, he wished he and Lidia had had a child. They’d kept putting it off because he hadn’t felt ready. And now he was. “No,” he told Uncle Alton. “No kids.”

  “So, I see you’re not in the baby-father business,” the old man chuckled. “You need to spend more time down here.”

  Chris placed the painting of his mother back against the wall. He felt he needed to escape from the studio and the house. But as he turned, he caught sight of a woman with a queenly tilt of her head, holding a red rose in her right hand; he was struck by her intense gaze, as if she could see the future, even as he recognized that Uncle Alton had a definite knack for painting flowers.

  “Lady Bustamante,” Uncle Alton said.

  “Who?” Chris was confused. Was that another family member? Another aunt?

  “She was Bustamante’s wife—Busta was our first prime minister, but I know you not here for any history lesson. Still, come, let me show you the scrapbook and the photo albums.”

  Chris felt his head spinning. He sank onto one of the countless chairs in the living room as Uncle Alto
n went towards the wooden bookshelves that filled a wall, returning with a thick, rectangular, ledger-type book that he dropped onto the dining table. “It was Veronica who started the scrapbook, cutting out pictures and stories from the Gleaner. And I inherited the damn thing because it was too much to take to America when she left.”

  Chris flipped the pages quickly, wanting now to leave and get back to the comfort of Miss Della’s laughter.

  “Stop! You know who that is, right?”

  A tall man in a suit, with a mass of white hair, was dancing with a younger woman who was wearing a gown and, yes, a tiara.

  “Bustamante and Princess Margaret, sister of the queen,” Uncle Alton proclaimed, as if it were the prize-winning answer to a TV-competition question. “I was there that evening,” he muttered, in a softer voice. “I was there.”

  Chris had to sit for another fifteen minutes, while Uncle Alton sank into nostalgia, relating all the things that Busta and his wife had done for the country both before and after independence; he barely heard most of the information.

  At the back of the scrapbook, he saw the clipping about his grandmother’s drowning. It wasn’t pasted in like the other articles and pictures, just inserted between the final page and the cardboard cover.

  “Veronica put that there when she came home for the funeral,” Uncle Alton told him.

  Chris read it to the last word, without speaking, as Uncle Alton looked over his shoulder. And he thought of sitting beside his mother that day at the beach, drinking coconut water as she stared at the sea.

  The telephone rang as Chris was wondering how to take his leave, amidst descriptions of Busta’s trade-union battles for workers’ rights. The unexpected shrilling dragged Uncle Alton back from the past.

  “Who could be calling at this time of evening?” the older man exclaimed. He pushed himself to a standing position, waiting for his joints to adjust before moving to the phone. Chris listened to his sharp exclamations, the “Oh my God” repeated several times, and he wondered what had happened.

  “It’s Miss Sandra. My helper,” Uncle Alton said after he hung up. “Bus accident.”

  He was shaking. And Chris knew without asking. The head on the road. He stayed another hour to keep the old man company. He wished he’d never returned to Kaya Bay. But perhaps he’d had to be there, just for this: to give comfort when Uncle Alton needed it. Life was just fuckery, he thought. Pure, friggin’ fuckery.

  chapter four

  Hospital Rooms

  The day after Brandon picked them up in Kaya Bay and drove them back home—as Chris had begun thinking of Miss Della’s house—Stephen called. Chris was outside in the yard at the time, and Miss Della shouted to him to come to the phone.

  Stephen went straight to the point: “Chris, sorry, man. Had to take your dad to the hospital. When can you come?”

  After he hung up, Chris spent the next two hours calling around before managing to get a flight for the following morning. He was lucky, it was the last seat available, the travel agent informed him, before quoting the astronomical cost. Chris made the booking without hesitation.

  He would leave all the paintings, he told Miss Della, and come back for them when he could. Without his knowing it, she told everyone about his impending departure, and that evening they all tramped up to the house to wish him safe travel: Lorraine and Mr. Jordan from the nursery, Miss Vera and the other neighbours who came to care for their empty houses, Miss Pretty in her fur coat. She entered the house for a few minutes, looked at him for a long time, and left without saying anything.

  Brandon drove him to the airport at sunrise, along another new road, with the sea on one side and huge boulders on the other. This road used to be flooded during the rainy season, Brandon said, and the government debated whether to build a high wall which some American contractors had proposed. “But the environmentalists got vexed because that would’ve killed off sea life, you know, something the fool-fool politician-dem never think bout,” Brandon chuckled. In the end, they had simply raised the road, an obvious solution to anyone with common sense, Brandon said. And they brought in boulders gained from the excavation for the other highway—the one through the mountains.

  Brandon gave Chris a warm hug when he dropped him off in front of the departures area. “Take care, man. Come back and check us.”

  Chris found he couldn’t eat on the flight, although he was already missing Miss Della’s breakfasts. But he was pleased he had a window seat. He stared out at the sea and sky for the duration of the trip, without talking to the man sitting next to him. He desired no more words.

  * * *

  Chris knows he will relive this too, over and over in the years to come. Waiting in the hospital room for his father to be wheeled back from the operating block. The same musty smell of the room, as when he waited for his mother six years earlier. He opens the window. The paint on the outside of the wood is peeling. The pane is single glazing, showing that the place hasn’t been renovated in years. Voices of nurses or cleaners reach him from somewhere. He looks outside. They’re down below: four women in their scrubs—light blue pants and tops, white coat. One wears a burgundy-coloured uniform. A different department? They sit on concrete steps in the courtyard, next to the garden that this private clinic boasts. It’s a pleasant view.

  One of the women smokes a cigarette. He tries to listen to their conversation. It’s not English, nor Spanish. Polish? He doesn’t recognize the language. His father’s room is on the third floor, and the trees reach up outside the window. He’d forgotten about the difference in seasons. It’s the first of February, and the chill, after the warmth of the island, makes him shiver. But he keeps the window open for a bit longer. Two of the trees sport dried-up brown leaves, waiting for a strong wind to gust them to the ground. But the garden also has firs and shrubbery that provide green among the brown. He knows these details will come back, even when he reaches his father’s age.

  When you’re in a clinic, it’s probably a boost to have a room with a garden view. But he can’t keep the window open forever. It has obviously been raining, and the cold contains dampness. He doesn’t want his father to be chilled when he returns from the operating ward. He tenses as voices sound in the corridor outside. Someone whistles a short tune. The clunk of wheels. A man’s cheerful voice says, “304.” Not his father then. This is 303. He checks his phone. It’s two o’clock. He’s been here since eleven fifteen.

  Someone knocks at the door. Chris thinks it’s perhaps a cleaner, coming to disinfect the room or make the bed in preparation for his father’s arrival. A slim man, who’s almost as tall as he, with untidy brown hair, enters. His clothes hang loosely on him—black jeans, a white polo, a grey windbreaker. He looks like he’s about to go for a game of soccer with his friends. He introduces himself as Dr. Puccini.

  “Everything has gone well,” he says, as he shakes hands. “He’ll be brought back to the room in an hour, but we’d like to keep him here for a couple of days.”

  Chris nods, thinking that Dr. Puccini looks too boyish to be a surgeon. He must be a couple of years younger at least.

  “Tomorrow the nurse will come to take the gauze out of his nose. Until then, he has to breathe like this . . .” He opens his mouth and pulls air in, expelling it loudly.

  “Won’t that be difficult through the night?” Chris asks.

  The doctor gives a half sigh, and a shrug. “It’ll be all right.”

  “And afterwards, will he be able to eat normally?”

  “Nothing too hot, or too spicy. Soft-boiled rice.”

  Chris stiffens. “How about mashed potatoes?”

  “That’s good too. And he needs to take things easy. No running around and heavy lifting.” He briefly describes the procedure: removing cysts that interfered with his father’s breathing, depriving him of oxygen. His father lost consciousness because of this. “It’s not an uncommon procedure. Really nothing to worry about. He’ll start feeling better soon.” Dr. Puccini smiles witho
ut showing any teeth, just a slight brightening of the features. He nods and leaves.

  Chris watches the door close, then goes to sit in the armchair with the faded grey plastic upholstery and silvery metal legs. The covering is torn on the right armrest, the yellow sponge peeking through. He thinks about all the work, all the materials that go into making a chair like this—aluminium, wood, plastic, sponge. And the thread used to stitch the covering. That’s unravelling too.

  He stretches out his legs on the matching footstool and slides down in the armchair. He wishes he could sleep. More than anything, he wishes Lidia were here to keep him company. He stares at the high, rectangular clothes closet in front of him. It’s a pale shiny blue with a pale grey door. An ugly thing as furniture goes. The colours in the room are grey (chairs, bathroom door, entry door, closet door), white with flecks of brown (the walls), beige (the bed), white (the sheets), light blue (the closet), and black (the small TV screen mounted above the closet). He takes in all the details, seeing the room on a canvas. He misses his sketch pad although he knows he wouldn’t have the energy to draw anything.

  Despite the window being closed, it’s still cold in the room. The radiator on the wall is way too small to provide adequate warmth. It’s an old one with the exposed pipes reaching up and through the ceiling. Everything about the place says pre-1960s. To pass the time, he decides to look up the exact date when the clinic was built, but as he puts the search term into his phone, a message comes in. It’s from Féliciane: So sorry to hear about your dad. How is he? Glad you’re back.