Blue Mountain Trouble

by Martin Mordecai

  From inside the house behind them, like the rumble of faint thunder, came the soft muffled voices of their parents talking to each other. Usually this was a reassuring sound, but it made hardly a difference to Pollyread’s unease.

  And then a sunbeam burst through the clouds and rain, splashing into the yard in front of them. It was abrupt and brilliant, startling Pollyread, and as she watched in wonder, the rain was burnt up in its blaze and ceased falling. As the light spread, it seemed to absorb all sound.

  The goat, it occurred to Pollyread, had appeared in the darkest moment of the afternoon. Had the creature been driven away by the approaching light, or had it ushered it in?

  * * *

  Later, as the twins were under the shed washing up for supper, Nurse Blackwell — Valley’s midwife, and the nearest thing in the district to a medical person — passed on her way home with the news that Keneisha had just birthed a healthy baby girl.

  Pollyread, who had gone to the gate to take the message, asked Nurse, “What time Keneisha’s baby born?”

  “ ’Bout four o’clock. Was pouring rain,” said Nurse. She gave a broad smile that lit up the darkening afternoon. “Then, just as she born, the sun come out.”

  Jackson had followed Pollyread to the gate. Pollyread turned and they looked silently at each other.

  Miss Know-it-all.

  Pollyread knew that was her nickname among the Marcus Garveyites who didn’t like her — teachers too. She also had a reputation for sharpness of tongue, however, so she didn’t often hear the gibe made openly. But Sharon Wilson’s voice was quite clear in the yard as grade sixers tumbled out for lunch break, everybody heading for Shim’s grocery or Miss Clarice’s cookpot.

  “Watch them nuh? Miss Know-it-all and Miss Fancy. Nose in the air a-catch fly.”

  Pollyread’s first impulse was to ignore the taunt. But Sharon Wilson was Jammy’s half sister. And Aidrene Albert — whom Pollyread hadn’t noticed until that moment was right next to her — bristled and stopped. They didn’t say a word to each other but turned on their heels together to see Sharon Wilson and Idris Morgan a few meters away, Sharon’s face bug-eyed and vacant as usual, Idris’s lips tweaked in a mocking smile. One that disappeared swiftly, with its owner, when she saw Miss Know-it-all and Miss Fancy advancing in tandem, definitely not smiling. Sharon’s eyes widened with awareness of her sudden solo condition.

  “What you say, Miss Know-nothing?” Aidrene’s voice rasped like sandpaper. The insult bounced off Sharon’s hard head, but her eyes, Pollyread noted, registered the lowering of Aidrene’s head. That head, crammed with intelligence and information, was also a weapon feared in the school yard and passageways of Marcus Garvey and beyond, the subject of many stories. (Pollyread had always thought that Aidrene used her head in a fight so that she would not risk damage to her manicured fingernails — an opinion she kept to herself.) At the last moment Sharon stepped out of the way of the advancing Aidrene — directly into the path of Pollyread. Who merely stretched her arms out. Momentum alone sent Jammy’s sister stumbling backward, her broad backside abruptly meeting the ground to a tinkling of laughter from the children who’d seen. Without even glancing at each other, Aidrene and Pollyread turned and went their separate ways.

  But the incident brought Jammy back full rush into Pollyread’s consciousness. His face, so close in look and expression to Sharon Wilson’s a few desks away, hovered in her thoughts in the after-lunch session of school.

  By the end of the school day, without talking to Jackson about it, Pollyread had decided that Mama had to be told about their role in the depredation of the backyard during the rainstorm of the night before last. She loved the word depredation, which had come to her freshly minted in a passage Miss Watkins had read in class that morning. After class she had fished out the dictionary she always carried in her schoolbag. “An attack involving plunder and pillage,” the dictionary said. Pollyread knew what plunder and pillage meant — they had a ring to them too. Turning them over in her mind like those hard paradise plums that Miss Clarice sometimes sold, she tasted their sweet sounds, but also the bitter images of the Gilmore backyard after the depredation. Guilt about bringing Cho-cho inside, against specific and clear instructions, prickled her thoughts.

  Clear conscience sleep through thunder, Mama would say when she was trying to coax the truth from one or both of them. It usually worked. This time, Pollyread was determined she wouldn’t have to coax or wheedle: Pollyread and Jackson would bring their wrongdoing to her and take the consequences.

  Pollyread was already feeling better for having made the decision, even though she hadn’t actually told Mama anything yet, and really didn’t want to think about that part of it anyway — that was for later. But she did feel … lighter.

  Except that, at the end of school, when she was ready to go lightly home, she couldn’t find Jackson. They didn’t sit near each other in class, so she hadn’t even noticed him leaving the classroom at the end of Miss Grange’s health science session. Out in the school yard he was nowhere to be seen. Her eyes found first Trucky, then Bollo, then Janja Forbes. They were all together, and she noticed a cricket bat and some stumps — but no Jackso with them. She looked toward the market garden plot, where Marcus Garvey Primary students competed for prizes for the best vegetables and fruits, and where, if he wasn’t playing soccer or cricket, Jackson was generally to be found. Not a sign of her twin. She searched her memory like she did the school yard: No, he hadn’t said anything to her about his after-school plans. Where the devil was that bwoy?

  “Pollyread!”

  The sound of her name from behind spun her around. Aidrene Albert was running toward her, followed by Christine Aiken. The voice had been Christine’s, always a little husky, as though she had a cold. “You coming?” Christine called as they came up to Pollyread.

  “Coming where?”

  “We going to see Keneisha baby.”

  “No you’re not,” said another voice right beside them. The three girls spun and looked up into the stern face of Miss Watkins.

  “Why not, Miss?” asked Pollyread, who hadn’t even made up her mind if she was going.

  “The baby just born yesterday.”

  “We know, Miss,” Aidrene said, puzzled by her teacher’s attitude. “We going to be the first to see her.” She grinned with anticipation.

  “Her grandparents and her uncle and auntie see her already,” Miss Watkins pointed out in her teacherly way.

  “We know that, Miss,” said Christine, her face alight. “But we going to be next.”

  “No you’re not,” Miss Watkins said again.

  Pollyread was hardly listening. The mention of uncle and auntie had confused her — and then astonished her when she realized who Miss Watkins was referring to: Trucky. Uncle Trucky! And Auntie Blossom, who was in grade four! She burst out laughing at the thought.

  “What sweet you, Miss Gilmore?” Miss Watkins asked sharply.

  “Nothing, Miss.” Pollyread felt her face warm with embarrassment and laughter.

  “You all will give the baby germs,” Miss Watkins continued.

  “No, Miss,” all three girls cried together.

  “We will wash our hands, Miss.”

  “And your face and every other part that might touch the pickney.” Her voice was stern, but Pollyread knew that Miss Watkins’s apparent embargo had been lifted.

  “We not going to touch her, Miss,” said Christine, the baby expert. “We only going to look see what she look like.” She gave her teacher her most winning white-teeth smile.

  Miss Watkins humphed. “You all be careful. Baby is not dolly.”

  “Yes, Miss,” they all said as she turned and went back inside the school building.

  Pollyread swept the school yard with her eyes one more time, looking for Jackson, and then ran to catch up with Christine and Aidrene, heading toward the school gate.

  Confession, she thought, could wait. The guilt wasn’t going to disappear. And Jackson
should be there, to share the load.

  * * *

  “Evening, Mass Tom,” the girls called in unison to Mr. Cowan, coming down the path toward them. Mr. Cowan, a small, slim man with sad eyes and a large domed head topped always by a felt hat that made it larger, lived alone just beyond Trucky’s family. Every evening around this time, he could be encountered, freshly bathed and tidied in clothes that had previously served for Sunday church and funerals, strolling down the path that led past Standpipe to Stedman’s Corner — and Shim’s rum bar.

  “Evening, little ones,” Mr. Cowan replied courteously, inclining his head. He called all the children of Top Valley, even teenagers taller than himself, little ones. “I hear that some of you will be leaving us for the big city.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Aidrene.

  “Yes, Mr. Cowan,” said Pollyread.

  “Congratulations,” said Mr. Cowan. “It’s a big world out there.” He nodded again as he went by them. “Make the most of it.” Mr. Cowan spoke slowly, enunciating his words very carefully. Teachers at Marcus Garvey held him up as an example of clear speech. “Very clear,” Trucky was heard to remark once. “When he in him rum at Shim’s, you can stay clear over by Miss Clarice and hear him, clear-clear.”

  “We will, sir,” said the girls to Mr. Cowan, even Christine.

  Mr. Cowan nodded and smiled as he moved on down the path.

  Pollyread felt a sudden cool wind blow through the corridors of her mind. She had felt it before: yesterday at church. The singing, even her own voice, and Reverend Forsythe’s preaching, had sounded in her head as though coming from a great distance, from the other side of Valley. An echo surrounded everything. And she saw the whole congregation and church at the same time, herself included in her light blue dress and white hair ribbons, as if looking down from the ceiling, like the occasional bird who flew in the open windows would have done. This had not happened to her before, in AME or anywhere else. And it was happening again now.

  Something impelled her to stop and turn to watch Mr. Cowan walking down the path, with the feeling that this moment was special, unique (unikew, as Jackson liked to irritate her by saying), and would not happen again. As if — she wasn’t sure about this, and fervently hoped she was wrong — she would not see Mr. Cowan again. But not because something bad was going to happen to Mr. Cowan. Something was going to happen to her.

  Pollyread felt uncomfortable, as if her clothes were suddenly tight, and wondered whether she should really have gone straight home, Jackson or no Jackson, and confessed their crime to Mama and got it over with. But guilt was not the cause of these odd feelings, she decided. She didn’t know what was.

  Trucky’s mother was at her gate, resting one powerful arm on top of a whitewashed gatepost and watching them come up the path. Taking a breeze-out, as Valley people would say.

  “Well!” said Miss Gloria as they approached, looking at the girls with pretend ferocity. “I was wondering when we was going to see you.” Miss Gloria (Miss G if you were her good friend, but children could barely imagine such familiarity) was a big woman, taller than her husband by a full five or six centimeters, and with shoulders and arms that handled hoe and cutlass with ease. Her face was black and broad and flat like a mask, a face that seemed ready for anything and expected the worst. When she was on the warpath, grown men with sense found a quiet corner elsewhere. But she was one of the storytellers of Top Valley, and little children were welcomed into a broad, soft lap on those nights when she was telling her Anancy stories. The three girls knew that warm place well.

  “You soon turn Townie now,” she gently mocked Aidrene and Pollyread. “Soon forget your poor country cousins.” She smiled warmly at Christine, including her in the second, more noble category.

  Even though they knew Miss Gloria was only poking fun, the remark left Pollyread tongue-tied. To “turn Townie” was among the worst remarks that could be passed at you. Growing up in Top Valley, its isolation part of the air you breathed, everything exciting or important seemed to happen elsewhere, in Town or abroad — and Town was practically abroad, so far were its ways from the ways of Valley. So the pride you felt about your home was mixed with awareness that it was only a small piece, and an unimportant piece, of a very big world.

  At the same time, in the eyes of many adults like Miss Gloria, who was born in Valley, Town was Sodom and Gomorrah. “The abode of the prince of darkness and corruption,” Reverend Forsythe thundered from his AME pulpit (though he was not himself averse to extended visits to the prince’s lair). Town was where the young people of Valley went and came back ruined, the girls with bellies and the boys with attitudes and language that no one in Valley could tolerate. For all that sin and degradation, though, Townies went around with their noses in the air — “So them don’t have to look down at the garbage and dead animal in the street,” said Mama, who was a generally cheerful exile from the city where she had been born and raised. Townies behaved as though Town was the world, everywhere else in the island was behind God’s back, and the people from such places an inferior species.

  So Miss Gloria’s teasing, while not at all malicious, left Pollyread feeling awkward, as though she and Aidrene were inappropriately dressed.

  “But see we come now, Miss Gloria,” said Aidrene, growing her most dazzling smile like a black-and-white sunflower, and reaching on toetip to kiss Trucky’s mother. Pollyread and Christine dutifully followed suit. Miss Gloria purred and chuckled.

  “We proud of you,” she said, one long arm around Pollyread and Aidrene, the other around Christine. “We will stay and pray for them in that Babylon,” she said to Christine, giving her an extra squeeze.

  “And we come,” said Aidrene, her tongue dipped in syrup, “to look for your granddaughter.”

  Miss Gloria giggled. “Lord, him good, you see?” sounding more Keneisha’s age. “Him just eat and sleep. No trouble at all.” No one remarked on the switch: Him could be any living thing of whatever gender, on two legs or four; the listener would know the who and the what being referred to.

  Miss Gloria opened the gate for them like she was raising a curtain on a stage. “Come make me show you him. But sh-h-h, I think them sleeping.”

  They followed her up the path in silence, Christine in the lead, and bunched up behind her solid figure when she halted in the doorway of the room that Keneisha shared with her younger sister, Blossom, who was nowhere around, and now the baby. It was shuttered and dark, a fan somewhere quietly whirring, brushing the baby smells of powder, urine, and bleach into Pollyread’s nostrils. Thin strands of light from the half-closed shutters fell across Keneisha and her baby, curled like different-sized dark beans against each other on a bed, the peacefulness of the darkened cell blessing everyone.

  As if sensing the presence of her mother and the girls, Keneisha opened her eyes. She smiled like she was bringing something very pleasant back from wherever she had been.

  “Howdy,” she said softly, fluffy tongued.

  The baby, hearing her mother’s voice, snuffled and cried out, sounding like a distant bird. Keneisha touched her baby’s tiny face, her hand covering it. The baby gurgled and was still.

  Keneisha beckoned. Moving as one, the girls tiptoed over and knelt beside the bed. The baby, whose hands and feet, fingers and toes were gently waving and wriggling in the air, turned her head toward Pollyread, who was between Aidrene and Christine, and looked at her. Pollyread had read somewhere that for the first two weeks of their lives, babies could see only vague shapes and colors, and recognized people by their smells and sounds. Well, this baby, though only a day old, was looking, at her. She didn’t care what the books said: Those wet little eyes, shining like stars underwater, hooked on to her face. Not Aidrene’s on one side, nor Christine’s on the other — hers. The baby yawned, blinked twice, and smacked her mouth.

  “She smile at me,” Pollyread cried delightedly. “Miss Gloria, she smile at me.” The baby’s mother and grandmother laughed with Pollyread, who put one of
her fingers in the baby’s soft claw. The baby grasped and pulled it in the direction of her mouth. Pollyread felt a wriggling in her belly-bottom like a worm.

  “Keneisha, I can hold her?” Pollyread asked timidly, her stomach wound as tight as the little fingers around hers. She had never felt so grown-up in her life. The baby was like one of those dolls she was always giving away, but this one she wanted to keep close by. Forever. “Please.”

  “Come wash your hands,” Miss Gloria said from the doorway. The girls trooped outside, Pollyread understanding but impatient, to a pail of water on a table under a lime tree. A couple cut limes floated in the water. Each tried to get her hands into the pail first, splashing the others in the process. Christine finished first, and dashed back into the house while drying her hands on her school uniform, leaving Aidrene and Pollyread pouting at each other.

  When they got back inside, Keneisha was sitting up and offering the baby, who seemed to Pollyread about the size of a loaf of brown bread, to a smiling and disgustingly relaxed Christine. Pollyread herself was tense and nervous.

  “Put your whole hand under her back and neck,” said Keneisha earnestly.

  “I know,” said Christine, who had probably handled more newborns than everyone else in the room put together — Miss Gloria was in the kitchen. Pollyread didn’t particularly like dolls, and had never before wanted to have younger siblings, but now — right now, she would have given her eyeteeth, and perhaps even her Common Entrance scholarship, for the ease and confidence with which Christine gently swung the little bundle and crooned into her rapt face.

  “It little-bit, eh?” Aidrene cooed. Aidrene herself was in the middle of a large family, but Pollyread didn’t think she bothered much with those younger than herself. Still, she was edging closer to Christine, making sure to be next in line for the treasured bundle.

  When Pollyread’s turn came and the little bundle rested in her cradling arms, warm as dough against her chest, she wanted the moment to last forever. Nothing else mattered. Not Common Entrance, not Town, not even her guilt. Nothing. Everything that mattered in life, so far as she could tell, was resting warmly against her chest, a lucky charm of happiness.