If I Never Went Home
Ingrid Persaud
Blue China Press, London
BLUE CHINA PRESS
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IF I NEVER WENT HOME
Ingrid Persaud
Copyright © Ingrid Persaud 2013
All Rights Reserved
The right of Ingrid Persaud to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers.
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Kindle Edition
Published in the United Kingdom by Blue China Press
For Avinash,
with love and gratitude
CHAPTER ONE
There was a sharp knock at the door, and a woman in light blue scrubs stuck her head into the room.
‘Excuse me, doctor, but you wanted the file as soon as I got it.’
‘Thanks,’ said Bea Clark, taking the grey folder and placing it on her desk.
The woman backed out of the room and closed the door. Dr. Clark took off her brown suit jacket and hung it over the back of her chair.
‘Sorry about that, Stephen,’ she said.
Stephen shrugged and looked away.
‘As I was saying,’ Dr. Clark continued. ‘Would you mind counting backwards in sevens? Start with one hundred.’
The burly nineteen-year-old stared across the room. At six feet and 250 pounds he could easily crush the young doctor, who had never made it to 100 pounds or past five feet.
‘I’m not counting,’ he growled. ‘You think I’m some fucking retard that I can’t even count?’
‘I’m sure you can count. But humour me. Just try counting backwards in sevens. Start with one hundred.’
He sprang up from the chair. ‘I said, I’m not counting. You deaf?’
‘Stephen, I know how strange this must seem. Please sit down. Believe me, I understand that you’re scared. I understand more than you can imagine.’
He sat back down with a thud. ‘What would you understand about me? You don’t know nothing. I ain’t scared of you. I ain’t scared of nothing.’
Dr. Clark ignored him. ‘The counting, the questions about dates, events, they all help me evaluate how well you’re doing today.’
Stephen folded his arms and looked away. ‘I ain’t talking to no shrink.’
Bea propped up her chin with her interwoven fingers. She remembered her time in St. Anthony’s Hospital. She was a different person then. She could not have offered Stephen any hope. She too had been reluctant to accept help, least of all from her parents.
‘Well, that’s good, because I’m not a shrink,’ she smiled. ‘I’m what they call a clinical psychologist. A lot of my clients at this Crisis Centre have anxiety issues. Often they’re confused or depressed. Might be self-harming. I work within a team. And yes, the team includes a psychiatrist to help people get better.’
‘Call yourself what you like,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying nothing, so don’t ask me about no bullshit numbers.’
‘A few other people are going to need to speak with you. After our chat you’re going to meet my colleague Dr. Payne. He’s the head of this unit. Nice man. He has a lot of experience. In fact he’s a world expert on depression, so you’ll be in good hands.’
Stephen glared. ‘What do I need with a world expert in depression? Don’t be stupid. Men don’t get depressed.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Bea said. ‘It’s not an illness that discriminates.’
He looked her up and down. ‘You’re not even American, are you?’ he asked. ‘Where’re you from? India?’
She smiled. ‘If I tell you something about me, you’ve got to tell me something about you.’
He dug his fat fingers deep into his jeans pockets and parked his size-twelve, high-top sneakers on the edge of her desk.
‘Take your feet off my desk,’ she said, quiet but firm.
He hesitated for a few seconds, but put them down. He slumped further into the chair and pushed his long legs wide apart, his crotch in full view.
‘I was born in Trinidad,’ she said. ‘But I’ve lived here in Boston on and off since college. Gosh, it’s been twenty years.’
Stephen looked up at the ceiling.
‘You want to tell me what happened this morning?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said, turning his attention to the tiled floor.
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Dr. Clark, bending her head to catch his eyes. ‘I think you’re desperate to talk to me because, unlike friends or family, I am not here to judge you. My only job is to listen and help if I can. That’s it.’
Stephen closed his legs and fidgeted in his chair.
‘Is it your arms?’ she asked. ‘Please?’
He sighed, pushed his grey sweatshirt up a few inches and looked away. His big hands began shaking slightly.
‘May I see?’ she asked.
He continued to look away and said nothing.
Dr. Clark got up and walked around the desk. Even when she stood up, he seemed to tower over her. He held out his left arm and pushed the sleeve further up, his hand shaking. Crude cuts, in varying stages of healing, criss-crossed the flesh. Some would leave permanent scars. A few were very recent, still crusted with blood.
‘Thank you, Stephen.’
He pulled the sleeve down and jerked his head violently against the wooden chair back.
‘Don’t hurt your head,’ she said quietly.
He did it again, then bent forward, hugging his head between his knees.
‘Stephen, do you understand why you’re here?’ she asked.
‘They didn’t need to call the cops,’ he moaned. ‘I wasn’t going to hurt nobody. They didn’t need to call the damn cops.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Did you want to hurt yourself? Is that why you were on the roof of your apartment building?’
‘Get out of my fucking face! If I want to end it, that’s my business.’ He curled his knees into his chest. For the first time Dr. Clark saw tears in his eyes. ‘I don’t need help.’
‘It’s my job,’ she replied softly.
They were silent.
‘Stephen, do you understand why people might have been concerned?’ She paused. ‘Stephen? Can you look at me?’
He put his hands over his face.
‘What happened today?’ she asked gently.
He was quiet.
‘Stephen, we need to talk about today.’
He hugged himself. When he finally spoke, his voice was low. He was trying to hold back tears. ‘It’s my life. My life! They didn’t need to bring me down here like some criminal. In a police car.’ His voice cracked. ‘Neighbours think I must’ve killed somebody.’
This time the tears did not stop. Dr. Clark sat back and looked at him, his muscular body hunched over, shaking as he sobbed. Soon, he would be able to talk about what took him to that rooftop. For now it was enough to sit, silently respecting his pain.
CHAPTER TWO
Bea Clark had not always worked with patients li
ke Stephen. This new career had started only a few years ago. She couldn’t remember exactly when she decided to go back to college in Boston and turn herself from a history professor into a psychologist, but the idea had been creeping up on her from the moment her father Alan was killed.
Bea could recall the details of his death a hundred times over, but they never made sense. Sudden deaths like his did not happen to ordinary people leading ordinary lives, unremarkable in every way until the moment of extinction. Was her father just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Was it chance, or fate? Bea had tried to concentrate on the phone call from her mother Mira in Trinidad.
‘You mustn’t grieve too much, darling,’ Mira had said. ‘He didn’t suffer.’
‘When?’ Bea asked.
‘I told you already,’ Mira said. ‘Today. A few hours ago.’
‘And it was on the highway near Couva, you said?’
‘No, not Couva,’ said Mira, sounding irritated. ‘Further south. By Claxton Bay. You remember the flyover?’
Bea hung up without saying goodbye. How could she react to something she did not understand?
The phone rang again. This time Mira’s words were inescapable.
‘Was anyone with him?’ Bea asked. Her voice felt alien, as if someone else was speaking through her.
‘He was alone.’
‘And the other car?’
‘It mash-up, mash-up.’
‘And the driver?’
‘That’s the thing I can’t understand. The man walked out of there with, what? Two, three little scratch. He didn’t even need the hospital, but they keeping him in for observation.’
‘But how?’
‘Child, the man was stink drunk. He must have never even seen your father’s car until he hit him.’
‘But Dad was wearing a seatbelt?’
‘I really don’t know.’ Mira paused. ‘They say it was instant. He didn’t suffer.’
‘You sure?’
‘The impact,’ she said in a low voice. ‘His neck. It broke his neck.’
Strange things happened around that spot. Bea had driven past the turnoff for Claxton Bay countless times; it was always a mesmerising place, but now in an acutely personal way. She could remember vividly the first time she heard of Claxton Bay.
‘Where we going, Daddy?’ she had asked.
‘We going to see one of Daddy’s friends,’ Alan Clark replied.
‘Who?’
‘Is the Rahaman family. They know you, but you mightn’t remember them.’
‘They have little children?’
‘They have a boy about six or seven. Your age. And I think they have a girl a little bit older.’
‘Where they living?’
‘Claxton Bay. Is not far. Now, your job, Miss Beezy, is to read the road signs on the highway and tell me where the turnoff is.’
‘Okay.’
They drove south from Port of Spain towards San Fernando, past Chaguanas, Couva and Preysal. Bea showed him the sign, partly obscured by tall sugarcane. Claxton Bay turnoff, one mile.
‘You know, babes, they say is haunted around here.’
‘For true?’ Bea’s eyes widened. ‘Like jumbies will come and suck your blood?’ She unwrapped a piece of chewing gum she had been saving and popped it into her mouth.
‘Exactly. They say it have a ghost up here does haunt people all the time.’
She chewed noisily on the gum. ‘You telling fibs, Daddy.’
‘Somewhere up in Claxton Bay have a statue of a young girl that don’t have a head.’
‘Where the head gone?’ she asked, frightened.
‘Nobody know. They say as soon as the statue get put up, the head break off and fall down. Just so. Just so. Nobody touch the thing and it drop off. And every time they try to put it back on, in a few days it does fall off again.’
‘And who is the girl in the statue?’
‘They say is a young white girl. She was a pretty only child. Just like my pumpkin,’ he said, leaning over to tickle little Bea’s tummy. ‘When she was about sixteen, the girl fall in love with a boy from the village. But her father say, no way no how she going marry a poor black boy working in the cement factory. But the girl and boy did really love each other, and they ran away.’
She spat the gum back into the wrapper and shoved it into a pocket of her shorts. ‘Where’d they go?’
‘Well, that is the thing. The story was that they didn’t get far when a big snake drop on them from a tree. It was at least seven foot long. The snake tie itself round the girl neck. You ever see a snake long so?’
‘No.’ Bea trembled.
‘The snake was ugly and fat. You must never go near one, okay, Beezy? They kill you before you have time to say boo.’
‘So what happen to the girl and boy?’
‘People say the big snake kill she right there on the spot.’
‘Oh Lord,’ said Bea, staring out at the dense lushness of the cane fields. ‘We have any snakes by our house?’
‘No, Beezy. Anyway, that is how come the parents put up the statue of the girl to remember she.’
‘What happen to the boy?’
‘Nobody know for sure. Some say the snake kill him too. But the girl ghost does haunt all about Claxton Bay area near the highway. Plenty people say they see she.’
‘What she look like?’
‘They say she pretty and does be wearing a long white dress like a nightie. But if you see her, is serious bad luck. You could bet your last dollar something real bad go happen to you soon after.’
‘You ever see her?’
‘No. Never.’
‘Will we see her today, Daddy? I frighten.’
Alan gave a small steups, sucking his teeth. ‘No, man. Jumbie can’t take hot sun like this.’
‘You sure?’
‘Sure, sure. And even if there was a ghost lady in a white dress, Daddy will make sure nothing happens to his one and only Beezy-pumpkin.’
Bea meant to promise to protect her Daddy in return, but forgot.
The lady ghost was patient. One fresh spring day, when Bea was all grown up, a young history professor separated from her Daddy by thousands of miles, the ghost took her revenge. As Bea walked across Boston Common, she bent down to pick a lily as a token for Michael, a man she thought she might love. At that precise moment, her Daddy, driving past Claxton Bay, saw the young ghost in her white nightie standing in the middle of the road. Everything went blank. Daddy’s head was broken off.
CHAPTER THREE
Miss Anna says we have to wait at the side of the stage and she will come for us when our name get called. I’m feeling queasy. The sorrel drink and ham sandwich like they fighting up in my tummy. Three of us reach the finals. I want to go to the toilet but if they call ‘Tina Ramlogan’ and I miss my turn I’ll get disqualified. That’s what happened to Cathy-Ann in the first round. I know my poem by heart. Every day I’ve been practising in front of Mummy’s long bedroom mirror, saying the poem out loud. Miss Celia next door complain to Mummy that she know the whole poem too. I’ve been reciting it to our puppy Boo-Boo. But Boo-Boo doesn’t always stay to the end where the little boy drop down and dead. I wonder if the poem frighten the dog. I never thought of that before.
They should hurry up with all them speech about the school and how the principal and teachers are an example to the nation and how crime would go down if more children took part in competitions like this. Oh, no. I feel a pee-pee coming.
‘Miss Anna!’
‘Sshhh.’
‘Miss Anna, I have to go to the bathroom, please Miss.’
She want to know if I sure. Well, of course I sure. If I don’t go right now I going to pee in my panty. The children’s toilet is too far, so Miss Anna carry me to the teachers’ toilet. If you see how nice that toilet is, and full of toilet paper. I could have stayed in there, but Miss Anna only saying hurry up Tina they starting. I push the wee out as fast as I could and we run back just as the big judge from
the Ministry of Education was calling for Curtis.
‘Curtis Thompson, come up to the stage please.’
Curtis thin as a piece of wire. He’s ten like the rest of us, but if you didn’t know you would say he’s about eight years old.
‘And what will you be reciting for us today, Curtis?’
‘“Silver”, by Walter de la Mare.’
‘Very good.’
Curtis and his silver this and silver that poem. Everybody know gold more expensive. My Nanny said that when she dead she going to leave me a big fat gold bracelet that her Agee bring from India. She say I would never find a bracelet like that in Trinidad. Not even Marajsingh Jewellers have bracelet heavy like hers.
Next up is Joyce Mohammed. She win last year hands down and is the favourite to win again. Plus she’s the brightest girl in the school. And on top of all that she only gone and choose a poem the whole school know. When she’s on the stage reciting it the children them saying it too. All you see is children with their mouth opening and closing in time with her.
When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay,
To keep me happy all the day.
La, la, la, la, la. Oh and look how she curtseying. Bet she learn that in Miss Pauline ballet class. I used to do ballet. Miss Pauline ban me. She tell Mummy I am the first child she ever ban. ‘Nalini, don’t take this the wrong way but Tina don’t have a single bone in she body that can dance.’
I don’t remember what Mummy said to that. Miss Pauline said she should not waste she hard-earned cash on ballet lessons.
Sharp pains start in my tummy again.
‘Miss Anna, I want to go to the toilet.’
She pretending not to hear me.
‘Miss Anna, I have to go again.’
‘Sshhh. You went already.’
‘I know, but I have to go again.’
‘Well you can’t go now, so hold it in tight.’
‘I can’t!’
Just then Joyce finish.
‘That was a splendid performance, Joyce. Excellent. If this is the kind of student St. Gabriel’s is producing, then Trinidad’s future is in good hands. Let us give Joyce another round of applause.’
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