A Million Aunties

by Alecia McKenzie

  The question startled her, and she glanced uncomfortably in Leroy’s direction. “Stephen, you know I can’t.”

  He too looked over to where Leroy stood, and he gave a slight smile. “Yeah. I understand. Although maybe he could come too? I don’t think he’s been home for a while.” He chuckled drily and turned back to the coats, staring at them as if he wanted to summon Miss Pretty. Then he squeezed Féliciane’s shoulder and walked out of the gallery.

  * * *

  Everyone said they “loved” the exhibition, but along with the sense of achievement Féliciane couldn’t avoid a lingering dissatisfaction, a familiar sadness. She hadn’t yet learned how to manage the guilt. She wanted to tell Leroy about Stephen, and yet there really was nothing to tell. Things happened and you moved on. She wished Stephen knew how to be happy. She wondered, not for the first time, why he hadn’t continued to draw, instead of now representing other artists. But she had never seen his work.

  She and Leroy strolled home together afterwards, each wearing a fur coat with Miss Pretty’s face painted on the back.

  chapter six

  Rememberings

  Stephen shoved his hands deep into his pockets as he strode the fifteen minutes back to his apartment, cutting through side streets to avoid the too-bright streetlamps and neon signs of the main roads. Inside the one-bedroom flat, he leaned with his back against the door, taking in the bareness of his living room. A three-seat sofa, a wooden dining table with four matching chairs, a desk and stool. And the massive black-and-white painting Chris had given him, hanging above the sofa, a city at nightfall. The room held no TV, or decorative knickknacks. He liked it this way. Belongings weighed him down, made him stressed.

  He straightened, kicked off his shoes, and approached the desk, picking up the notebook with his writings. He’d started jotting things down, the memories from when he went to live with Auntie Della, but nothing from before. He wasn’t ready for that.

  He thought of writing a letter to Féliciane—he had so much he wanted to tell her. Instead, when he sat down, the words that poured out were about Miss Pretty. He wrote late into the night.

  * * *

  Miss Pretty was crying again today, I told Aunt Della.

  Lawd, Miss Pretty always a-cry, Auntie said.

  But it wasn’t true. She cried only once or twice a month, whenever she stopped in front of one of the houses and saw her reflection in the window. I’d been watching her for years as she strode through the neighbourhood, from the time Auntie took me to live with her. She marched along as if she had business waiting for her, yet we all knew she had nowhere to go and nothing in particular to do. Every Saturday when she climbed up the hill and passed our place, Auntie would put a few things in a paper bag—mangoes, carrots, oranges—and tell me, Stephen, go give Miss Pretty this. And I had to race after her, calling out: Miss Pretty, Miss Pretty, Auntie said to give you this.

  I hated it.

  I had to sprint past her, then turn around and face her, to get her to stop. And as I stood there stupidly with the bag in my hand, she drew still on the path, wrapped her fur coat tight around her body, and looked right through me. She always accepted the gift with a, God bless you, son.

  Why you always have to make me do this? I asked Auntie. And as usual she gave me lectures about “there but for the grace of God go I.” I hadn’t a clue what that meant, but I felt guilty and ashamed just the same. Sometimes I tried to stay longer at football practise so as not to be there when Miss Pretty passed, but just like spite, she always managed to come down the street, right after I got back. And so it was, Stephen, mi dear, go give Miss Pretty this for me, no?

  Auntie wasn’t the only one who supplied Miss Pretty with a few vittles, vitals, itals, though. As she walked from one end of the neighbourhood to the other, ignoring the dogs barking at her while safely keeping their distance, people hurried to put a little something into a paper or plastic bag and went running behind her fur coat, even in the years of IMF belt-tightening when we hardly had enough for ourselves.

  Miss Pretty was probably in her forties, but she still had the lithe body of a teenager, wiry like my aunt who liked to walked too, but only to get from house to nursery to market and back. The coat couldn’t hide her leanness nor the long firm legs, and I imagined men in the neighbourhood joking to their wives that they ought to take up walking, and heard in my head the wives kissing their teeth as they slammed something down on the table or stove.

  By this time I was now seventeen and getting ready to graduate from high school, and Miss Pretty had walked throughout my childhood. Yet, I’d never said anything to her besides Good morning, or Good afternoon, or Here’s something from Auntie for you.

  I’d lost count of the stories I’d overheard to explain Miss Pretty’s walking, but the one most often repeated was this:

  When Miss Pretty was eighteen, her mother took out a second mortgage, paid a lot of money to get her a visa, and sent her to study art, or something like that, in Canada. Why would anyone want to spend all that money for their pickney to study art? Imagine that, people said. Anyway, while there, Miss Pretty fell in love with a teacher and had his son. The man promised to marry her, but before the wedding could take place, Miss Pretty had an accident. She and her baby’s father were going out one night when a drunken driver crashed into their car. On her side. She spent weeks in the hospital, and when she was discharged, she discovered that her baby’s father had changed his mind about marriage. You know how man is, the women in the neighbourhood said. You expect little and get less.

  Miss Pretty’s visa had run out, though, and soon the immigration people came knocking at her door, in the middle of the night. She had to return to the island, with just the coat on her back, leaving her son with his father who promised to visit but never did. Miss Pretty returned to her mother’s house, and people in the neighbourhood tried hard to hide their pity when they saw her broken face, with the deep scars and the mouth twisted permanently to one side. As the years passed, Miss Pretty stopped talking. When her mother died and left the house to her, she started walking . . . in fur coat and turban, paying no attention to the dogs and the stares. People in the neighbourhood said, Poor thing. She used to be so-o pretty.

  But, you know, in their pity, I thought I heard a kind of satisfaction, and it made me wonder: Was being too pretty a kind of sin? How many had envied her when she was pretty enough to have been a beauty queen? But these were things I couldn’t ask Auntie. Instead, I drew pictures of Miss Pretty in my sketchbook, imagining how she was before and erasing the scars she now had. I was never very satisfied with the drawings—I knew I wasn’t going to be another Barrington Watson. I would never have been as good as you and Chris if I’d gone into art. But at least they looked a bit like her.

  Another version of the story said: Miss Pretty hadn’t been to Canada at all. No, once she’d left high school, she’d started working at one of those scandalous hotel complexes farther up on the North Coast, places where the tourists wandered around butt naked as the day they were born, showing all to anyone who wasn’t too embarrassed to look. There she fell in love with one of the guests, or vice versa, got pregnant, and found herself fired. The man, meanwhile, had quickly returned to America. Or Canada. Or Germany.

  Miss Pretty suffered through seven months of the pregnancy, with her mother at her side. Then, as a taxi was rushing her to hospital for a premature delivery, the driver ran a red light and a minibus slammed into the car. On Miss Pretty’s side. The baby was stillborn, and Miss Pretty’s face disfigured for life. She started walking when she got out of the hospital.

  Our neighbours also said, with that kind of joyless, uncomfortable laughter, you know the kind I mean, that walking was in Miss Pretty’s blood, because her father had been a walker too, and perhaps his mother as well. Throughout his life, her father had been one of those who longed to “return to Africa,” Auntie told me when I asked about the story. He’d been a tall, good-looking man, with dreadlocks almo
st down to the middle of his bottom, and he looked more Indian than African. But who wants to go back to India? Auntie laughed.

  You know, Miss Pretty’s mother wasn’t into Rastafarianism or dreadlocks at all, Auntie said, but she went along with that man’s foolishness, cooking him ital food without meat or salt, and not saying one bad word bout him to anybody. And she would just look the other way when him roll a big spliff and sit on the verandah blowing smoke up into the air, or when him jump on him motorbike and ride off for yet another meeting with the Sons of Zion.

  From what Auntie and the neighbours said, it was during the seventies, one Saturday night, that Miss Pretty’s father got caught in a police roadblock as he was coming back from a meeting. The officers of the law, hating him for his dreadlocks and using the small stash of ganja in his pocket as excuse, clobbered him with their batons and rifle butts, and dragged him to jail, where they shaved off his hair. They kept him locked up for two weeks as a lesson to his Sons of Zion brethren, then they released him. And that’s when he started walking, Auntie said. Some people in the neighbourhood joked that if he’d kept it up, he would’ve walked all the way to Africa, to Zion. But he never got there. A police jeep hit and killed him on the causeway between Kingston and Spanish Town (it’s now called the Nelson Mandela Highway) when Pretty was eleven years old.

  So everyone agreed that walking was in Miss Pretty’s blood and I started thinking that it must be true. The first time I’d noticed her, I had giggled and called out to Auntie, Look, I am mad like her. Watch me walk. And I’d marched around the living room, my arms held stiffly at my side, staring straight ahead. But Auntie hadn’t laughed. Instead she had run after me, spun me around, and slapped me on the face. Don’t ever let me see you make fun of people like Miss Pretty! she shouted at me. You never know what can happen to you in this life! And when I had stopped bawling like a fool, more from the shock than anything, she gave me a brief, fleeting hug, then a long lecture about illness, how it can attack your body as well as your mind. And if I’d known the words then, I would’ve told her that I was mocking Miss Pretty to ward off the sense that one day I, too, could end up walking.

  Still, Miss Pretty didn’t look sick to me at all. In fact, she looked super fit and healthy, only strange and somewhat frightening. I always tried not to look at her face when Auntie sent me to her with the food. I focused only on her eyes—which I could now draw with my own eyes closed—and over the years I began noticing that they grew bright when she looked at me, as if she was starting to see me. Still, I wished that Auntie would take the blasted bag of food herself. I really was getting too big to be doing that now. In a few months, I would be going off to university, yet during the summer holidays before I left, Auntie continued sending me out after the fast-moving back of Miss Pretty. And if I complained about going, she would fix me with a long look that made me think of all the things she had done for me and what a worthless nephew I was. So I would just roll my eyes and stomp out to the path.

  One day that July, as I gave Miss Pretty her bag of goodies (that’s what I’d begun calling it to my friends), I told her hesitantly, Sorry, but you won’t see me for a while because I’m going to the States to university.

  She stared at me. Are you going away? She spoke quite properly, like a schoolteacher, and it surprised me. I found myself stuttering.

  Yes, Mam, I’m going to study business in . . . in America.

  Her eyes gleamed. America. Perhaps you will see my son there?

  I started to say, I thought your son was in Canada, but different words came out of my mouth without my even realising it. Yes, I’m sure I’ll see him. I’m sure he is fine. He probably looks like you, Miss Pretty.

  Her gaze became more intense, and I couldn’t look away. My name is Cynthia. My name is not Pretty. What is your name?

  My name is Stephen, Miss . . . Cynthia. I held out the bag which I’d almost forgotten, along with the sketchbook containing the drawings I’d done of her. She took them both, and, as the light slowly went out of her eyes, she said, God bless you, Stephen.

  When I went back into the house, I told Auntie that Miss Pretty had spoken to me. What she say? Auntie asked. Nothing much, I replied. She just asked my name. For some reason, I felt cautious, as if I’d been given a glimpse into a secret world and now had to be careful what I said and did.

  The exchange with Miss Pretty was still in my head the following morning, a Sunday, when we heard the commotion in the neighbourhood—a mix of laughter and people shouting. Miss Pretty, stop, go put your clothes back on! someone yelled above the babble. Auntie and I went out onto the path to see what the fuss was about, and we stood still and silent at the sight of Miss Pretty marching down in her birthday suit, not a stitch of clothing on, no sign of the fur coat. Lawd God, Auntie said. I found myself rooted to the spot, unable to take my eyes off Miss Pretty’s bare figure. She had the body of an athlete, like one of the runners I had grown up loving—Junie Johnson. She was firm and brown and toned and more beautiful than I had imagined, and I wanted to continue looking, but Mr. and Mrs. Charles from up the street ran to Miss Pretty with a sheet and forcefully wrapped her in it. I could hear her shouting, They took my son away! They look my son away from me! I want him back! I felt an urge both to rush to her and to retreat inside the house, but my feet remained stuck where I was. I watched as the neighbours urged Miss Pretty away, her sheet-robed body disappearing into Miss Vera’s house at the top of our street.

  Beside me, Auntie shook her head and muttered, Poor poor Pretty. She took my arm and we slowly went back to the shade inside the house.

  Before I left for university, Auntie sat me down, saying there were things I had to know. But I already knew most of what she had to say, of that story we’ve carried together all these years. And I’ve never told anyone. One day, I might tell you, Féliciane.

  chapter seven

  It’s Hot in July for Fur

  Most days the sun seemed determined to spite her, to smite her, to push her back to the coolness of her silent house. Before she had taken a dozen steps, she could usually feel the sweat coursing down her forehead, trickling down her back, and creeping between her breasts. She mopped her face with the green-and-white plaid handkerchief she always carried—one that had belonged to her father. She could still picture her mother ironing his handkerchiefs every Sunday evening and folding them into neat squares. He’d had so many, but now there was only this one left and she took it with her every morning and washed it every evening. She hung it on the line in the backyard, beside her turban, the white dress, and the fur coat, and by sunrise the next day everything was dry and ready for the road, thanks to the heat.

  When it rained, she had to find another costume and another piece of cloth to wrap around her head, to prevent the sun from frying her brains. Last night it had poured, as if a hurricane was on the way, and her clothes were dripping on the line this morning. She tried to find something else to wear, but nothing was suitable. It was impossible to go walking around in red or sky blue when one was in mourning, and black was suicide in the heat, so white was the only colour that seemed right and correct under her coat. But she hadn’t been able to find another white dress this morning, and the coat itself was sodden. She searched the two wardrobes and the chest of drawers, only to find that everything looked and smelled mouldy, with unpleasant furry white spots. She realised that one day she’d have to sort through all the clothes and throw some things away. One day when she had the time to sit down and listen to her own thoughts.

  She’d had to abandon the search because the sun was coming up and she needed to be on the road before the heat became too fierce. She forced herself to forget about the dress, about the coat, and it was such a pleasure to feel the air on her bare skin as she stepped out of the house. She inhaled deeply, enjoying the perfume of the morning glory flowers that her mother had planted so many years ago in the front garden. She felt as if she were floating. It took no effort at all to walk up the slope to Vict
oria Street, and the sun was kind today after the nighttime rain. Its light was gentle as it restrained its violence for now.

  She could hear people waking up and moving about in their houses as she passed by on the road. Miss Vera was already out on her verandah when Miss Pretty reached the corner of Victoria Street, but rather than the Good morning, sweetheart Miss Vera always gave, Miss Pretty instead heard a strangled Lawd God have mercy! As she walked on, she could feel the eyes boring into her exposed back, even as the neighbourhood’s brainless, mangy dogs began their irritating cacophony.

  Miss Pretty, sweetheart, come back. Don’t go walking around like that, she heard Miss Vera yell after her, the woman’s urgent voice competing with the dogs’ barking.

  But she was just hitting her stride now, feeling the blood pumping through her body. I’ll walk until you come back to me, until you’re returned to me. One foot in front of the other. A fast walk, just short of a run.

  She was aware of others coming out of their houses, some rushing up to their gates to gaze at her. She saw flashes of male grins and felt the women’s frowns. She heard the shouts of, Go and put some clothes on, Miss Pretty! She ignored them and kept walking, and was surprised when a man ran up and held her by the arm. Soon a woman joined him and took her other arm, and they both began draping a sheet round her body. As they did so, Miss Pretty heard anguished shouts but didn’t realise the words were coming from her own mouth. Then she closed her eyes and said nothing more, allowing herself to be led back up the road to Miss Vera’s house. She let Miss Vera take her by the hand and lead her inside.

  If you wanted to borrow a frock, why you didn’t come and ask me? Miss Vera asked. You can’t go walking around naked as the day you were born, you know. Your mother wouldn’t like it, believe me. I can make you any frock you like.

  Miss Pretty didn’t answer. She watched as Miss Vera went to her kitchen for a few minutes and came back with a steaming plate of boiled bananas, ackee, and saltfish.