by Sharon Maas
‘She’s no better,’ a nurse told me. ‘We’ve given her tranquillisers, so she’s asleep now, but the shock is deep and the moment they wear off and she remembers, it’s the same. Hysterics no end.’
Since there was nothing I could do for Winnie I went to visit the Stewarts. I liked both Andrew and Eliza and I hoped they could give me a neutral report of what had happened.
To my delight that visit confirmed my own suspicions. Eliza was alone at home. When she heard about the police visit she immediately placed a telephone call (the Stewarts had all the latest inventions; I looked on in amazement) to her husband, who was, of course, I remembered, a lawyer; when she returned her face was drawn.
‘This could be serious, Andrew says,’ she said. ‘George should not have spoken to the police without a solicitor present. Andrew is going to George’s place right now to sort things out. And he’ll get it sorted. Don’t worry,’ she went on when I opened my mouth to speak, ‘He’ll work for free; George is a friend.’
By midday the rumour was running wild in Georgetown’s high society: George had raped Yoyo. It seemed, to some people, thoroughly impossible that a white woman would willingly have done what Yoyo is supposed to have done with a black man. No. He must have attacked her, forced her into submission.
Those who knew her, and those who had been present at the party, only laughed at that suggestion and shook their heads. But there was no proof, and as yet no accusation from Yoyo herself. A witness, the officer had said. Someone had reported a rape. But as yet there was no evidence of anything. They had only this: George, Yoyo and Winnie upstairs. Winnie running downstairs, tripping and falling. But that, it seemed, was enough fuel to fan the fire of rumour, and George’s imaginary crime was on every white person’s lips.
The next day George was hauled before a judge, a white judge. Andrew was with him, armed with witness statements. These, together with George’s utter devastation, must have been convincing enough for, pending Yoyo’s statement, he was not charged. I wondered, for a moment, if she would go so far as to confirm rape. Had I raised such a monster? Or rather, had I NOT raised such a monster? I knew that a rape charge was the only way to save her reputation, whatever was left of it. She had stood laughing at the top of the stairs, witnesses from the party confirmed, and that, perhaps, is what convinced the judge that there might be some truth in George’s story.
That evening a message arrived, special delivery, from the telegraph department. George had been suspended from duty pending the outcome of criminal investigations.
It was the last straw for George.
‘How will I maintain my family? How will I find work? It’s not true! It’s not true! I didn’t assault her, it was she, she who – what will Winnie say? What if they send me to prison, Ma? What if she lies, what if I am tried and convicted? Isn’t that what she will want?’
‘Shush, George, don’t worry. We will all work to clear your name. Soon you’ll be back at the job.’
I wondered, though. Once a man has such a rumour attached to his name – even if it is proven untrue – can he ever free himself from the cloud of doubt hanging over his head? There will always be whispers, rumours.
Then another outburst:
‘The bank! The bank!’ he cried out. ‘I’ve lost everything! Everything! Our house!’
Bit by bit, the story came out. George had been saving for a down payment on a house, and had found just the place, on Lamaha Street. He had been just about to sign for a bank loan; it was to be his big surprise for Winnie, her birthday present next week.
‘If I lose my job I can’t get the loan,’ he sobbed.
‘Don’t worry about the loan,’ I said, stroking his hand. George had long slim hands; the hands of a pianist. He had a musical streak; with a few more advantages he would certainly have mastered more sophisticated instruments than the banjo. ‘If the worst comes to the worst, I’ll buy the house. You can pay me back at your leisure. But it won’t come to that. I will speak to Yoyo. I won’t let this happen, George. I promise. Yoyo is naughty but she’s not a devil.’
He shook his head and said nothing, as if he disagreed with those last words. But then he looked up with eyes bleeding anguish and said, ‘If you can help me save the house, Mama… if it comes to that – if I lose my job – if they try me and find me guilty – oh Mama! It’s not just the house. It’s everything. You can’t save my marriage and that is a thousand times more than my job or the house. It’s my all!’
I continued to stroke his hand, and all I could say was ‘Shush, George, Shush. Winnie will calm down and when she hears the true story she will forgive you. She will. I know it.’
‘But – the baby! The baby! It was all she wanted! She will never forgive me for that!’
That is indeed troublesome. That little girl lost. How will Winnie ever recover? Ever find it in her heart to forgive George for THAT loss? His faithlessness can be explained and forgiven; the consequences of this tragedy will remain for ever. I knew from my own loss that a mother can never recover fully from losing a child – and I knew that Winnie might well pin the blame on George.
But I am a mother, and a grandmother. Mothers contain a power in them, the power to put together the pieces of their child’s heart. The power to heal. The power, sometimes, to pull out the weeds from a soul that is all a-tangle, weeds that have been allowed to grow; no, nurtured and nourished until they strangle every noble impulse in that child’s heart. Mother is a not only a noun: it’s a verb. An active verb. I had not done much mothering when my girls were growing. I had to do it now.
In my children’s youth I had not been mother enough. I had failed them. For years I had been in withdrawal from my role in their lives. Winnie had weathered those years well enough, and grown into her own woman as a result. But Yoyo. Yoyo had pretended not to care but perhaps, deep inside, she did. Perhaps my neglect was the barren earth that had allowed these weeds in Yoyo’s heart to grow; weeds that now strangle the truth of who she is, that have allowed this second Yoyo, this ugly parody of herself, to flourish. If my neglect was the root cause, so, perhaps, my care now can provide the balm that will heal.
I am Yoyo’s mother. I must save her from the weeds that are smothering her. Mother is contained in smother. I must un-smother Yoyo, or die doing so.
The children are all taken care of. Winnie will still not speak to me, and I sense this will still be the case for days to come. When the time comes, as a mother who has known the ultimate grief myself I can hold Winnie’s hand through the process of slow recovery. I had no one in my days of loss and grief; she will have me, and that will be the difference. Winnie will not fall into the abyss, as I did.
George is in the best of hands with Andrew.
I must hurry to the child who needs me the most – Yoyo. I must return to Promised Land.
29
George
Winnie is forgiving by nature, but she will never forgive me for that. Those are the words I spoke to Mama, and in my heart I believe they are true. I think, in time, she can forgive my infidelity – once she knows, and believes, the truth. It was wrong to keep the truth from Winnie. I should have told her the true reason for my avoidance of Yoyo right from the start. Between a loving couple there must be no secrets – not even secrets that might hurt. I now became fully aware that in cultivating this fiction, I allowed Winnie her indulgence of Yoyo, allowed her to believe that it was only my stubbornness that prevented a reconciliation. I took the blame, exaggerating a small quarrel into something momentous.
In allowing her a false image of her sister I was not trusting my wife to be adult enough to cope with the truth. I was treating her like a child. I should have told her right from the start. But it’s not too late for her to know the whole story, and one day – soon, I hope – she will be prepared to listen.
But the death of our daughter! How will she, will we, ever recover from that! The daughter we have dreamt of for years; the daughter Winnie had longed for with every fibre of h
er being. Now it is not Yoyo who needs forgiveness, but me. My weakness alone has caused this. Yoyo’s disloyalty is nothing, nothing at all, compared to my own. And the result, the death of our daughter, is beyond forgiveness.
At the hospital I was permitted to see, and to hold, Gabriella Rose.
I wept over that cold little body. That perfect little dead thing. But these remains were not my daughter. My daughter had disappeared into the ether. I wept and laid her down, but then I was called to sign papers and I was given the body and told to take it; to bury it.
Still weeping, I went to a funeral parlour and they made arrangements for a burial. I signed some more papers. What hymns did I want? What prayers? But I could not think about hymns and prayers. How could I bury our daughter without Winnie at my side? What hymns, what prayers, would Winnie want? Could we not wait for Winnie to decide?
No, they said. Gabriella Rose must be buried immediately. Bodies decay very quickly in the tropics. She must be placed in the earth today, or tomorrow at the latest. I must choose a coffin and pay for it. I must bring clothes to dress the body. I must
I chose a coffin, paid for it and for the burial costs, and turned away. This was not my daughter.
‘Just bury her,’ I said.
Andrew was magnificent. He rallied several people who had been guests at the party. He himself remembered talking to me immediately before the incident – as the terrible thing was now called – and others remembered Yoyo going upstairs a few minutes after me. What a good thing that Yoyo was such an eye-catching figure, a woman who captured and held people’s attention! She had, apparently, been part of a small group chatting near the stairs. When I went upstairs, Andrew joined that group. And it was after he did so that Yoyo, suddenly silent, had excused herself and gone upstairs.
‘And just about everyone remembers Yoyo afterwards, standing at the top of the stairs, looking down and laughing,’ he said to me. ‘She did not look like a woman who had just been raped. She looked like a woman triumphant, George. Five people have given statements to that effect. Tomorrow you must go before the judge, but there is no evidence at all that anything untoward has happened. Nothing.’
‘But who reported that I had assaulted Yoyo? Someone must have! Did Yoyo do so herself?’
‘That report, unfortunately, is confidential. But I believe it was that friend of hers, Margaret Smythe-Collingsworth. Yoyo herself has not made a statement.’
‘And what if she does? What if she lies to make it seem that I did what they are accusing me of? Andrew, there were no witnesses. It’s her story against mine. Who will believe me, a black man? Who will believe that a white woman of high society would have seduced her sister’s black husband? No one will believe me! No one!’
Panic gripped me, cold fingers tightening round my throat. I could hardly breathe, and my heart thumped so hard I was sure Andrew must be able to hear it.
‘George, you must remain calm. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. At present, Yoyo has not made a statement. She has not accused you of anything. She returned to Promised Land the next day and no doubt the police up there will question her. We must wait for whatever she has to say.’
‘But she will accuse me. She will. That woman is evil! She is out to harm me, harm us. Of course she will accuse me. How else can she save her reputation?’
‘Ha! From what they say about Yoyo, she’s a woman who doesn’t care a fig about her reputation. The things I’ve heard – rumours, of course, but still. No smoke without fire.’
‘But if she’s out to damage me, that’s what she’ll say. What she’ll do. Andrew! I’m lost. My life is over. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve cared for, I’ve lost.’
It was as if the whole world was crashing in against me. I would end up in prison, just like Winnie’s father.
How could I? How could I have been so weak, so feeble? Why had I not pushed that woman away, struck at her groping hands? Escaped? Escaped just as I had at Promised Land that dreadful Christmas Eve? Knocked her down, if need be? But no – that would only have given her more ammunition. Had I been violent she would surely not have hesitated to accuse me of that dreadful crime – or at least, of attempting it.
But why had I been like putty in her hands? Why had my body reacted the way it did? The spirit is strong but the flesh is weak, the Bible says, or something like that. In Yoyo’s hands, my body had had a life of its own. Surely, had my spirit been stronger, my no more genuine, my body could not have reacted that way? Was there some tiny spark in me that wanted what had happened?
What kind of a man am I, to do this to the wife I adore? What kind of a man am I, to be led not by his love but by his lust? Where is the strength of heart I once knew, the force that placed me at the forefront of a mighty battle for freedom? The George of old would not have succumbed in this way. The George of old was a man of substance; his head held high, he would have walked away from temptation. The George of old would not be a whimpering mass of tears and self-pity. Where has the spirit fled that had me side by side with the bravest man I ever knew, my friend Bhim; the George who had once told Winnie, ‘This fight is bigger than us both, and bigger than our love?’
Where is my spine?
30
Ruth
Yoyo’s first words to me were cynical, her glare defiant.
‘Well? How is my dear sister?’
I would have none of it. I saw through her as if she were made of glass. This is not the real Yoyo. She pretends to be strong and above it all. She’s not. There was a telltale red rim to her eyes, so I knew she had been crying. There was a quiver in her voice. I knew she was about to lie. There was falsity in the role she projected, for that was all it was: a role. I refused to play her game.
‘Johanna, stop it. Stop it at once.’
She wavered.
‘Stop what’?
‘You know very well what I mean. Stop this nonsense.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t give me that story. I can see through it at a glance. I can see through you. Johanna, tell me: how could you?’
‘How could I what?’
That’s when my own act collapsed. Fury took over.
‘Don’t play your silly little games with me! I am your mother – I know you inside out! Don’t you dare pretend you don’t know what you have done! Deliberately made a play for your sister’s husband, deliberately trying to lure him into your web, deliberately playing on his weaknesses as a man! I saw you doing it when he was here, that Christmas years ago. Do you think that makes you strong? Do you think that because you turn heads you are some kind of a – a goddess, with the power to destroy hearts at the snap of your fingers? Hearts, and lives? How could you do it, Johanna? How could you!’
When I started my tirade Yoyo had been standing still as a statue; her gaze lowered, for her eyes could never have withstood the fire of my wrath. Halfway through, her bottom lip began to quiver. At that last word she let out a deep gasp, turned and fled. Out the front door, down the stairs to the garden.
* * *
I hadn’t even told her yet of the trouble George was in.
I walked to the window but she was not in sight. Running away from the truth, as she always did. I stood at the window, waiting; I knew what would come next, and it did. Whenever Yoyo was upset as a young girl she would go riding. Sure enough, a few minutes later I heard the clatter of horse’s hooves on the driveway leading from the stables. Yoyo came into sight, seated on her gelding Vitane. She was not dressed for riding, and her skirt was halfway up her legs, exposing her calves. The stirrup leathers would pinch her bare legs, and by the time she returned they would be red and painful. But that pain was nothing to that which I knew would be burning in her heart. I smiled to myself. My treatment was working.
It is not love to help those one loves to hide from the truth. It is not love to indulge them in their own illusions; and to remain silent is to indulge. Good sense might tell m
e I should have given my little lecture in a calm, collected manner. But letting my emotions, my rage, take over had been exactly right. Because that rage had definitely hit home, in a way calmness never could have. Had I been calm Yoyo would have kept on her mask and argued with me; my fury had given my words exactly the thrust they needed to puncture her at the core of her iniquity. And that was what was needed. A laceration. The lancing of an abscess.
I moved away from the window, satisfied. We would talk, but later.
The police arrived before Yoyo returned. Not a local policeman from New Amsterdam – they had sent one up from Georgetown, which was some indication of the seriousness of the case. When Yoyo finally walked in, her clothes dishevelled and limp with sweat, her face dusty and tear-streaked, her hair falling out of its bun, she stopped and stared and her face turned hard.
‘What’s he doing here?’ she said, pointing with her chin, as she plopped her riding crop into the umbrella stand.
The officer, who had been seated on the bench in the front hall, rose to his feet and walked towards her. I had been talking casually with him; offered him some lime juice, and avoided the topic we both knew he was investigating.
‘Ma’am, I came from Georgetown to discuss the alleged assault that took place Saturday night last.’
‘Assault? Assault? Is that what they’re saying now? Poor little Georgie-boy was assaulted? I’m telling you, he wanted it! He wanted it! How could it have happened if he didn’t want it? I’m not saying a word without a solicitor!’
‘Yoyo! Just hold your mouth for a second and let the officer speak!’
‘Ma’am – It’s not’
But Yoyo had taken the bit between her teeth, and was running with it. In a way I was horrified, but on the other hand I rejoiced. With her own words Yoyo was throwing cold water on the case against George.
