Blue Mountain Trouble

by Martin Mordecai

  Jackson looked up at Miss Singh with a grin like a death mask, as if she had caught him doing something wrong. Pollyread felt herself squirming in sympathy with him.

  “Any wash leave, Pen?” Mama asked. “Bring Miss Singh some, please.”

  “But, Maisie, how you can have the big scholarship girl pouring lemonade like ordinary pickney, eh?” Miss Singh and Mama cackled with each other. Pollyread couldn’t be upset at Miss Singh’s teasing. With her bony hands and scaly long-toed feet that could easily be imagined gripping a branch, Miss Singh had always reminded Pollyread of one of those parrots that flew high overhead some days, a dozen of them together, squawking and laughing with one another. And Miss Singh’s style of dressing — almost never skirt and blouse, though she put her daughters in them, but saris, reds like hibiscus flowers, yellows and pinks like poui blossoms — could pass for plumage. Pollyread went into the kitchen and poured out the last of the lemonade that Mama had made for their lunch.

  By the time Miss Singh had thanked her and taken the first sip, Cho-cho was up on his feet and barking again. It was Aunt Zilla, their nearest neighbor and some sort of cousin to Poppa. Without waiting to be asked, Pollyread went back into the kitchen to make more lemonade: She sensed how the afternoon would unfold.

  Each new visitor would wrap her possessively in a fleshy or thin, dry or sweaty, fragrant or not-so-fragrant embrace, for the moment claiming Pollyread’s achievement for him- or herself, and rain down congratulatory kisses and words on her increasingly muddled head. She began to understand how a doll would have felt in the hands of several girls playing together. From time to time she took a suck of one of the sour oranges, just to remind herself of her self.

  But she was also pleased and sweetened like the lemonade she was continually mixing. This was the moment she had worked and hoped and prayed for for a long, long time. She felt light-headed, a little drunk on all the words swirling around and in and out of her head. Like Christmas with a particularly nice present, and then the Christmas lunch when Poppa allowed them a small glass of sherry wine that made them giggle. From time to time now, despite her aching fingers, Pollyread giggled to herself.

  But she was brought back to herself when she looked out the kitchen window into the backyard and saw Jackson. He had changed into his yard clothes and slipped through the noise and confusion to where Pollyread knew he was happiest, tending the plants.

  She was angry with him. Not for being outside enjoying himself while she was in the kitchen grinding her fingers. This wasn’t fun but it was better than digging and weeding. She was angry because he wasn’t in here soaking up the words and the congratulations (though every now and then a visitor flung some words at him, which he waved at like he was catching them in his hand). He should have been a scholarship winner too, and it was pure don’t-care on his part why he wasn’t. It was bad enough that he didn’t do as well as everybody expected him to — though, she had to admit, better than probably eighty percent of the children in the island. What really was making Pollyread angry with her brother was that now they would be going to different schools in Town. He would be at King’s College. While she would be alone at St. Giles. She didn’t like that idea at all. Only rarely had they ever spent more than a day apart. Now they were looking at — Pollyread knew she was exaggerating, but it was Jackson’s fault — the rest of their lives, hardly seeing each other, having different teachers, different homework, nothing to talk about anymore…. She was so angry.

  Pollyread had known, from about grade three, as the twins worked their way to the top group of their class and stayed there, that this moment would arrive. They didn’t talk about it in the family, though, because everyone knew what it meant. And now it was here! Wonderfully, a Christmas present in the middle of the year. A source of joy. But also — Pollyread felt it in her belly — like one of Jackson’s seeds: Who knew how it would grow? (God, perhaps, but he wasn’t saying anything.)

  Praise and flattery, at Marcus Garvey this morning and from this afternoon’s visitors, were very welcome. And she felt a deep pleasure for Mama, glowing like a lantern among her friends. But she also felt excluded by Jackson’s dogged, tender ministering to his plants. She felt the silence from outside begin to worm its way into her thoughts, undermining her anger. She didn’t have a clue what he was thinking. He was out there with his plants, talking to them. Not a thought for his sister, his twin, and the situation he had placed her in. He was probably telling the plants about tra-la-lah-ing off to Town and all the fun he was going to have at King’s College. Without her. Well, there’d be no plants for him to talk to in that concrete jungle. Nothing grew there except weeds — and “weed” (ganja). Who was he going to talk to then? (Though even as she thought that she remembered the large back yard of Aunt Shiels, Mama’s sister, and Uncle Josie, with whom they’d be living in Town. That would suit Jackson just fine. And not many books for her in that house, mostly Aunt Shiels’ about nursing.) Apart from a few relatives, Pollyread knew not a soul in Town.

  Her mood for the rest of the afternoon wavered like the afternoon light outside, between brightness and shadows.

  You is not Pen, and Pen is not you,” Poppa was telling Jackson that evening, not for the first time. “Same horse race, different horse.” There weren’t any horses in Valley, only a few donkeys, but Jackson understood what his father was trying to tell him.

  They were outside under the shed where Poppa kept his tools for planting and for carpentry and masonwork. He had come home from Town to encounter Mr. Grandison, the last of the congratulatory visitors, on his way out. Fortified by a drink of rum Mama had poured him, Mr. Grandison was in a lighthearted mood.

  “Aha, neighbor,” he greeted Poppa. “The proud father of the bride.” With a flourish of his hand, he removed an imaginary hat atop his glistening head and bowed to Poppa. A bewildered Poppa, not knowing whether or not to smile, or even to come into his own yard. “Congratulations, Gillie,” Mr. Grandison cried out as he disappeared down the path, no doubt on his way to Shim’s.

  Poppa, hurrying off the bus and straight home, didn’t know what day it was. “What sweet Mr. Grandy?” he asked Pollyread, who stood grinning at the top of the steps into the house. She gave an elaborate, theatrical shrug as she stepped aside to let Poppa in.

  Jackson, hearing Mr. Grandison taking his leave of Mama and Pollyread, packed up his tools and was putting them next to his father’s in the shed when Poppa arrived. The moment he had dreaded all afternoon had come. Why hadn’t Poppa been home earlier? To hear the bad news and get it over with.

  At the same time, he didn’t want to not be there when Poppa got the news. That would be worse, so he scampered up the steps and into the house behind his father.

  “You all were having party in here?” he asked, looking at the dining table, which was still cluttered with several empty glasses, mugs, and plates with crumbs.

  Mama, busy in the kitchen, pretended to ignore him. “Ask the pickney dem.” There was a tinkle in her voice and it made Jackson even more anxious. The liveliness of the afternoon from which Jackson had excused himself persisted in his mother and sister, and in a moment would infect Poppa, when he heard Pollyread’s news. And then he would have to hear Jackson’s …

  “Somebody birthday that I forget?” Poppa asked, a half-smiling question crinkling his eyes.

  “Nobody birthday,” Pollyread laughed, dancing around her father with eyes as brilliant as her feet. “You don’t know what day it is?”

  Poppa put down his old leather bag that he always took to Town and swiveled around to look at Jackson. Caught in his father’s half-serious glare, Jackson felt naked. His mouth was dry. He managed a shrug. Poppa turned back to Pollyread.

  “Wednesday?”

  “Common ENTRANCE!” Pollyread shouted, throwing her hands in the air and preening on tiptoe.

  “Common Entrance?” Poppa said, puzzled. “I thought that was Febru …” His voice died away, and then he grinned. “Today? The results?�
� He looked from Pollyread to Jackson and back again, his grin widening.

  “You have a scholarship pickney,” Mama said from the kitchen doorway, drying her hands in a towel.

  Poppa dropped into a crouch so that his eyes were level with theirs, put his hands on his hips, cocked his head, looked from one to the other several times, and made a sound of a rooster crowing in the back of his throat. His face flooded with pride and delight, like Valley at sunrise.

  “Say what?! My babies? HA!” And he gathered them into his arms and squeezed them close for a long moment. Pollyread and Jackson felt something trickling through their hair like crawly insects, but they didn’t move. Pollyread thought of Mama’s favorite Psalm, the twenty-third: … thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

  Jackson, feeling like a cheat, thought to himself: Let this cup pass from me.

  “So …” Poppa released them. His eyes were bright with water, his cheeks wet. Jackson couldn’t remember ever having seen his father cry, and felt that Poppa somehow knew his son, from whom he and everyone else had expected great results, had let him and the family down. Jackson was close to tears himself. Beside him, though, he felt Pollyread, Miss Perfect, bubbling.

  “So,” Poppa said again, “ tell me….” He looked again from Jackson to Pollyread and back. “Both of you?”

  Jackson’s finger was quick: He pointed to his sister.

  Poppa straightened and held out his hand. “Congratulations, Miss Gilmore,” he said. He and his daughter shook hands formally. Then hugged again and spun around.

  Letting go of Pollyread, he turned his full attention to his son. “And what about you, Little Man?”

  Jackson looked at his father’s chest, at the little crescent-shaped scar that was sometimes visible just above the top button of certain shirts. “Second choice,” he mumbled.

  He felt Poppa’s finger under his chin, lifting his face so he couldn’t avoid his father’s eyes. “What that you say?”

  The room around him was still, Mama and Pollyread like the furniture.

  “Second choice, Poppa,” Jackson said, forcing himself to be clear. Poppa hated mumbling.

  Poppa’s expression didn’t change. “What that mean?”

  “I get into King’s.”

  “King’s?” Poppa turned to Pollyread. “And you going to —”

  “Saint Giles,” she said, her voice muted.

  “I see,” Poppa said, finding Mama’s eyes.

  “Them mix up Jackso’s paper, Poppa,” Pollyread cried out.

  “What you mean, mix up his paper? Who mix up his paper?” Mama’s voice was sharp. Jackson wished his sister to shut up.

  “Miss Watkins say it happen all the time at the Ministry,” Pollyread babbled on, looking sternly at Jackson as though he were the cause of all this.

  “How Miss Watkins know about Jackson’s exam paper?” Poppa asked.

  “Hush up, Pen,” Jackson said fiercely, before Pollyread could say anything else. “I get second choice. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Pollyread’s eyes flashed angrily at Jackson. “All? What I am supposed to do at Saint Giles, me one and God? Eh? Tell me that!”

  Jackson was tongue-tied by his sister’s explosive attack.

  “Calm down, Pen,” Poppa intervened. “That is not important right now.”

  Jackson watched as Pollyread gathered the thoughts that would set her father right as to exactly what was and was not important — and then thought better of it.

  “Come, Jackso,” Poppa said. “Let we go wash up for supper. How you get so dirty?”

  “Outside,” said Jackson with relief. “Weeding.”

  “Thank you,” said Poppa, and led the way outside.

  There, while they washed their hands side by side, he waited for his father to speak. Poppa scrubbed his hands and forearms as vigorously when he came from Town as when he came in from the backyard or ground. He washed his face as well, with the same carbolic soap, though Mama made sure there was face soap out there also. Jackson worked at his fingernails with a worn bristle brush: They would be inspected, slyly, at the table.

  “You is not Pen, and Pen is not you,” Poppa said quietly. He was drying his hands on a towel. “Same horse race, different horse.”

  Jackson, knowing what his father was referring to, continued washing his fingernails.

  “You do well to get second choice. First choice would be better, of course, but second choice is still good. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Plenty family up and down this island tonight celebrating second choice, and plenty more sucking on piece of cloth.”

  Then Poppa chuckled. Jackson glanced up to find his father looking straight at him.

  “It don’t exactly surprise me, you know,” Poppa said lightly, as though he was about to tell a joke.

  “What don’t surprise you?” Jackson asked, trying to sound casual, though he knew instantly what Poppa meant.

  “Second choice.”

  “What you mean?”

  “You don’t even break a sweat with the books, talk the truth.”

  Jackson looked into his father’s eyes, which were smiling but still steady on his. He looked away at his soapy hands and then came back to his father, as he knew he had to.

  He shrugged. One shoulder. Poppa understood. He smiled briefly, a breeze blowing across his face and then gone.

  “All well and good,” Poppa said quietly, keeping his voice below the clinking of cutlery and plates coming from inside, “but your mother is not sure what to think right now, and your sister is too sure what she think.” He smiled to himself. “You sister get scholarship, so the government will pay some of the cost. Them say that is free education, but nothing not free in this life, and certainly not education. But we will find the money for you.”

  Jackson took a deep breath. “I don’t want to go,” he said, forcing himself to stay in Poppa’s eyes.

  Poppa’s eye corners crinkled. “Don’t want to go where?”

  “Town. King’s.” He couldn’t find the words to make whole sentences, or the strength to look for them.

  Poppa put his head to one side, as if trying to see his son more clearly in the dim light of the little bulb above them. “What you mean?”

  “I could just stay up here,” Jackson said.

  “And do what?”

  “Dig ground. Plant things. With you. And Mama. Here.”

  To Jackson’s dismay, Poppa put back his head and laughed. He kept the sound down, but he laughed for a long time. Like a donkey braying, Jackson thought, puzzled. He hadn’t said anything that he meant to be funny.

  “And what,” Poppa said, bending slightly toward him, “you think you sister would be saying about that?”

  Jackson couldn’t help smiling at the thought.

  “But you can’t stay up here,” Poppa continued, serious again. “Not now anyway. Farming is good. Nothing wrong with it. Is work with dignity, and if you farming your own land, it free you from the oppression of other people. I feel proud when I see the things come up out of the ground the way God mean them to. But is a hard life, Jackso. You know that. Look how hard you work. You want to be doing that all you life?”

  “Yes,” Jackson said simply.

  Again his father surprised him by smiling. “That’s what you say for now. And you can come back up here if that is what you really want to do. But the world is a big place. Go see some of it before you make up you mind what to do. And you need skills to do that.” He handed Jackson the towel he had been using. “You have to go to high school to get those skills. And then university.”

  “You didn’t go to university,” Jackson said.

  “That is why you have to go.” He crouched down so that he was looking up at Jackson a little. “When I was your age, same way I treat the books. I like to read like you, but I like to dream too. Just like you. When I look like I was studying, I f-a-r away.” He stretched out the word and laughed to himself, not taking his eyes from Jackson’s. “J
ust like you — chip don’t fall far from block, eh.” Jackson smiled with him. “But dreaming don’t get you anywhere. Remember that, son. Book learning —”

  “Jackso! Gillie.” Mama, calling them inside to supper.

  “Soon come,” Poppa called back.

  “Come now.”

  Poppa’s eyebrows danced. “Book learning, Jackso. And you can’t get it up here.”

  “But what about ground?” he asked Poppa, revealing what he’d been thinking about all afternoon. “Morgan’s Mount.”

  Poppa laughed softly. “I still have some life left. I will keep it for you.”

  “What about Jammy?”

  Poppa’s eyes clouded over and his mouth tightened. “Jammy going to be gone long before you might be ready for Morgan’s Mount. In fact —”

  “Gilbert!”

  “— before school give holiday. Come.”

  As he straightened up, Poppa paused and bent over. Jackson felt his lips rest for a moment on his head top.

  * * *

  Pollyread, after they joined hands around the supper table, said grace. From the first few words, Jackson knew that this would be a long one. More than once, he had upbraided her that God didn’t have the time to listen to no long grace, when he had poor people to feed and gunmen in Town to smite with justice, but it made no difference. Mama always took her side: “He is God, he can do anything he like. He have time to listen to your sister. You should talk to him more often.”

  Tonight, Jackson didn’t bother to fuss. His head was full of Poppa’s words, and with the smell of Mama’s supper — salt pork, with cabbage, tomatoes, and seasoning from the backyard, and cornmeal dumplings.

  “… make the person at the Ministry find Jackson’s right and proper paper, and …”

  After he kicked her shin under the table, he didn’t hear anything else until “amen.”