If I Never Went Home

by Ingrid Persaud

  ‘I’m asking you again. Did you go to the party when you were told not to?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said softly. I was trying hard to hold back the tears but they had begun plopping directly on the ground in front me.

  ‘How did you get to and from the party?’

  I kept my head down. ‘Ken drop me.’

  ‘Ken who? And how old is this man you know with car?’

  Charmaine’s mother stepped closer in and tried to put her arm around Aunty Indra’s shoulders.

  ‘Indra, is okay. Ken is a nice boy. I sure nothing happen. And Tina behave herself in the party. I didn’t see any kind of foolishness.’

  Aunty Indra shook herself free. She squeezed my upper arm real tight and her long nails dug into the soft bit of flesh you have underneath your arm.

  ‘You are a disgrace, you hear me? A damn disgrace. You sneak out the house to go in car with a man none of us know from Adam?’

  People were coming up closer, not even bothering to hide their interest in Aunty Indra’s performance. I was crying as quietly as I could.

  ‘You are a total disgrace, Tina, and from the looks of these grades you’re a dunce too.’

  Aunty Indra was breathing hard and started rubbing her temples.

  ‘Well, you could say goodbye to all your friends right now because you not seeing any of them again. Everybody else going on to better themselves. You will have to find a job fast because if you think you getting a single dollar more from me you think wrong. Now come on.’

  She pulled me by the arm and marched me out the school gates. Everyone was watching. Even if I had the grades to stay on, I could never come back to this school.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The very thought of burying her father exhausted Bea. She was drained of emotional energy and unable to sleep in spite of acute tiredness. By five o’clock she was wide awake, dreading another day of constant visitors paying their last respects. The wakefulness was complete: she knew it was pointless trying to sleep, so she sat outside on the balcony. The cool morning breeze whipped through her thin cotton nightshirt, but she didn’t mind. Spread out below in twinkling lights was a map of still sleepy Port of Spain.

  Mira had bought this house almost two years before Bea left for university, but it had never felt like home. Her bedroom had been hastily converted into an office. For this unexpected homecoming, her mother had done everything possible to make the house on the hill welcoming. But Bea could never trust that the house would always be there for her to return to if she was weary or down on her luck.

  She wanted nothing more than to quietly enjoy the breeze, but the congestion of thoughts in her mind got thicker and louder and the tears began to flow. This grief was like nothing she had ever felt. It was pure acid that burned straight through flesh to bone. Yet it seemed unreal, as if it was happening to someone else. Other wretched losses had been mere rehearsals for the heart and mind to survive this loss.

  Mira came out, took one look at Bea’s tear-stained face and offered to make what she remembered as her daughter’s favourite breakfast of fried bakes and saltfish buljol. Bea wondered if this truce would have occurred without her father’s death. Soon she was following a comforting aroma into the kitchen – onions, garlic, tomatoes and saltfish, sizzling in hot olive oil.

  ‘You want Lipton tea while you waiting?’ asked Mira, looking up from stirring the pot.

  Bea nodded. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Ten minutes and I go done frying these bakes,’ said Mira. ‘You think Michael will eat bake and buljol or I should make eggs and bacon for him?’

  ‘No, I’m sure he’ll eat anything.’

  ‘It’s real nice to see him after all these years.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bea said. ‘It must be fate.’ She looked around the compact, tidy kitchen. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘No, man. You sit down. Is not every day I get to make breakfast for my one child.’

  Bea took her mug of tea into the living room and snuggled into an armchair. ‘You know what’s happening today?’ she asked.

  ‘I think they taking clothes to the funeral parlour. They will bury him in a suit and tie. And they have to meet with Father John to finalise the service. Tonight is wake as usual.’

  ‘You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,’ said Bea.

  ‘I don’t mind. I had nothing against your father.’

  ‘Funny how Granny Gwen loves you now that you’re not related.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why,’ said Mira. ‘And she softening up in she old age.’

  They heard the gate click as it was opened, then a dull thud as something crashed on the paved driveway.

  ‘That was the van dropping today’s papers,’ said Mira.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Bea volunteered. ‘What do you take?’

  ‘The Guardian and, as it’s Friday, Trini Expo should be there too.’

  Bea stepped out in bare feet on the cool paving stones. She found the papers in the middle of the driveway, tied together with string. She untied the bundle. The Guardian was headlining a new offshore drilling site to be developed by an American oil company. An opposition senator claimed that the deal was corrupt. If forced, he was prepared to name the government officials involved.

  She sat in the armchair, flipping through the rest of the slim paper. Prominently positioned on page three was a photograph of a pretty young woman in gown and mortar. Proud parents announced that Michelle Ali had obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from Florida State University. Bea saved her favourite part of the paper, the classifieds, for last. A Christian lady was looking for work caring for the elderly or operating a bread van. A holy man with psychic powers, direct from Chennai, would be in Trinidad for the next two weeks only and available for personal consultations, including matters of marriage, dealing with enemies and financial security.

  ‘Food ready,’ called Mira. ‘You eating now or you go wait for Michael to come down?’

  ‘I’m eating while it’s hot.’

  ‘Well, come in the kitchen then,’ said Mira. ‘And bring the papers with you.’

  Bea continued reading and could not help laughing out loud at the adverts. ‘There’s one here for special oils that you can buy to cleanse yourself, including Money Drawing Oil, Man Trap Oil, Boss Fix Oil and wait, the Oil of Oils, Influence and Victory over Evil Oil. All available in small, medium and large.’

  They sat at the small square Formica table, scrutinising the papers together and relishing the feast Mira had prepared.

  Bea remembered she’d left the other paper in the living room. ‘Let me get Trini Expo,’ she said, getting up from the table. ‘I haven’t looked at that rag in years.’

  ‘Trini Expo does tell you what really going on,’ said Mira.

  Bea picked it up from the arm of the chair where it had been tossed. Across the front page was splashed a colour photo of two crumpled cars slotted together. In the top right-hand corner was an inset of a dead man’s face awkwardly squashed on the smashed windscreen. The words and picture merged together. All Bea saw were white and black dots. Her hands shook and then her world went blank.

  Mira heard a thud as something heavy hit the wooden floor.

  ‘Bea!’

  Mira bent over her. Bea’s eyes opened slowly. She opened her mouth to speak but no sound escaped. Mira saw the paper clutched in her hand and prised it out of her fingers.

  ‘Oh me Lord,’ cried Mira. ‘Oh Father in heaven. Oh my God, look what they put in the papers! Oh, Jesus! How they get that picture?’

  She helped Bea into the armchair.

  Michael came rushing down the stairs.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked frantically. ‘I heard shouting.’

  Mira trembled. ‘What kind of people would take out a picture so and put it on the front page? Who would do a thing like that?’

  ‘Mira? Bea, you all right?’

  ‘The papers,’ said Mira in a hollow voice. ‘Look, Michael.’ She pointed to the newspaper. ‘Take it
away. I can’t look at it again.’

  Michael picked up the paper.

  ‘This is disgusting,’ he said, putting his hand over his mouth. He looked at Bea slumped in the armchair and reached for her hand. ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to see it ever again.’

  Mira steadied herself and sank onto the sofa. They sat silently while Trini Expo’s colour photos were created and recreated a million times behind their eyes.

  Michael broke the spell with a deep sigh. ‘Can they do that?’ he asked Mira. ‘It can’t be legal to publish those horror pictures.’

  ‘Who going to stop them, eh?’ asked Mira. ‘This is the kind of thing people want to see when they buy the paper. They do this all the time. Once on TV they even show the rape of a disabled child. Trinidadians get accustomed to this violence, day in day out. It don’t bother them any more.’ She stood up. ‘Oh God, I better phone by Granny Gwen. The old lady go drop down dead if she see this first thing in the morning.’

  She rushed off to the phone in the kitchen. From her side of the conversation it was clear that Uncle Robin, who was staying with Granny Gwen, answered and had already seen the paper and hidden it from his mother.

  ‘Robin, if I was you I would sue they ass,’ Mira said. ‘It might be news but that is people family and you can’t treat people so. Look, Bea fall down and faint when she see the picture. Is a lucky thing nothing else ain’t happen to she. You tell me if these people them have a heart. What, them ain’t have a father or a brother too?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Well you never think it going happen to you, eh,’ said Mira. ‘How you going make sure Granny Gwen don’t see it at all, at all?’

  Again there was a pause.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mira. ‘Well, try, boy. Do what you have to do. You want me come and stay with Granny Gwen while you see them? I done bathe and dress.’

  Another pause. ‘You sure Doris coming now? If you not sure, I go be there in two twos … All right, then. Later.’ Mira hung up.

  She took her time coming back into the living room. ‘Bea, you okay? You want water? You want to lie down? Come lie down. The shock have to work itself out of your system.’

  ‘No,’ said Bea. ‘What are we going to do about this? They can’t get away with it.’

  ‘Your Uncle Robin say he going straight to the head office,’ said Mira. ‘Let’s wait and see what they have to say.’

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like that before?’ asked Bea.

  Mira sighed. ‘I was telling Michael, the truth is they does run picture like this in the papers all the time. Mind you, not bad like this one showing everything. A man get shot in the road and you will see a picture with the man right where he fall down and dead. People think is normal to see that on the TV and in the papers. Is just another shooting or a stabbing. That is why we living with burglar-proofing bars on the windows.’

  Mira turned to look out the window. ‘I don’t like to keep dog, but even I thinking about getting one for protection as is me alone living here.’

  Michael sighed. ‘It’s going to take more than a guard dog to live here with any sense of security.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Chenette was in season and Granny Gwen’s legendary chenette tree, almost two storeys high, was laden with clumps of small green fruit. Granny Gwen’s late husband Ignatius had spent his entire working life at the agriculture ministry and had planted a number of different fruit trees from the seeds of particularly sweet specimens. There was a pomerac tree, Long mango and Julie mango trees, several orange trees, a soursop and a cherry tree. But Ignatius’s prize was the chenette, positioned for the right amount of sunlight, fed, manured and watered through the dry season. His dedication had paid off, and decades later his granddaughter Bea sucked on the sweet fleshy fruit while she helped to put out soft drinks, cheese paste sandwiches, mini meat pies, cookies and iced vanilla sponge cake to feed those who would be coming all day to pay their respects to Alan Clark.

  Aunty Doris gave directions about where to put the food. Uncle Robin sorted out the bottles to take for recycling, and put soft drinks in coolers full of ice. Michael and Charles cleaned up. Mira and Uncle Kevin arranged chairs. Granny Gwen was in her bedroom getting ready to face the day.

  People began trickling in almost as soon as the brunch was laid out. Most had seen or heard about the newspaper article and whispered their outrage. There was no disguising the collective disgust and trauma ordinary people felt when faced with these bloody pictures. It was not the final image of a person anyone should endure.

  Bea was surprised that she had stopped crying constantly and took this as a good sign that she was coping better. But she was constantly exhausted and longed desperately to go back to bed. Between her and the world was a solid glass wall, blocking sound and feeling as she was slowly anaesthetised by searing grief. People spoke to her and she was able to carry on conversations, but all feeling, good or bad, had disappeared.

  Mira came to check on her. ‘You all right?’

  ‘You want anything?’ asked Uncle Kevin from behind Mira.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Bea weakly.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll stay close to her,’ said Michael.

  As they walked off Michael gently nudged Bea in the ribs. ‘Remind me, please. How is he your uncle?’ he asked.

  ‘Who? You mean Uncle Kevin?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Michael. ‘I don’t remember him.’

  ‘He is some sort of half-brother. He and my dad were roughly the same age. I always assumed Kevin was Grandpa’s outside child. I’m really not sure. And there is some connection with my Dad’s eldest brother who died young, but no one has ever talked about it.’

  Michael held her hand in his. ‘Maybe now you’re all grown up Granny Gwen might tell you.’

  ‘I doubt it. It’s one of those family things. Uncle Kevin’s always around. But his surname isn’t Clark,’ replied Bea. ‘He’s a Foster. Kevin Foster.’

  Well-wishers interrupted their conversation, asking where they might find Granny Gwen. Bea went inside to find her. From the moment she climbed up the stairs into the house she felt soothed. She had always liked this old house. Granny Gwen kept it clean and tidy, ready to receive important visitors. Immediate family members were not allowed into the proper living room where crocheted cream antimacassars lay straight and undisturbed on the backs of the red upholstered chairs. Pink and white silk flowers, dulled by a layer of dust, stood proud in a vase on the sideboard. The dark wood sideboard was full of glassware and china reserved for relatives visiting from abroad or those deemed higher up the social ladder. Bea smiled as she glanced around the room. The house had remained unchanged for as long as she could remember.

  ‘Who out there?’ came Granny Gwen’s voice from the bedroom. ‘Robin, is you?’

  ‘No, it’s Bea,’ she called back.

  ‘Ah, I thought it was Robin,’ said Granny Gwen, walking into the living room. She was trying to zip up her dress.

  ‘Let me help you, Granny Gwen,’ said Bea, taking hold of the zipper.

  Granny Gwen pulled her dress hem down, then beckoned Bea to sit down on the red upholstered sofa.

  ‘Granny, how come you letting me sit down on the good chairs? I don’t think you’ve ever let me before. But Charlie and I used to sneak in when we were little and sit on them when you weren’t looking.’

  Granny Gwen laughed. ‘Well, you get big now,’ she said, snuggling next to Bea. ‘I don’t think you going to dirty it up.’

  ‘Promise, I won’t,’ said Bea.

  They sat for a moment in silence.

  ‘I so glad you here,’ said Granny Gwen patting Bea’s hand. ‘When you get old like me you doesn’t know when next you go see your family that living all over the place.’

  ‘I should come back more often,’ said Bea.

  ‘Please, child. For your grandmother sake.’

  Bea pushed a stray hair off Granny Gwen’s forehead. ‘Well, you still have Uncle R
obin and them to keep you company.’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed the old woman, but the tears had already begun to leak out. ‘You know that I did have another son who dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bea.

  ‘Matthew was nineteen, nearly twenty, when he dead,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘Then I bury your grandfather Ignatius, God rest his soul. That was another trouble.’

  Bea hugged Granny Gwen tight.

  ‘Granny, what about Uncle Kevin? I don’t think anybody has ever explained how he’s related to us.’

  Granny Gwen stiffened and her face hardened. ‘Go on, child,’ she said. ‘You better go tell everybody I coming down just now.’

  Bea sensed the sudden chill in Granny Gwen’s voice and left quietly.

  The old woman didn’t seem to notice. She was lost in another space. She sighed and sank back into the red sofa, her head resting on the crocheted antimacassars.

  Granny Gwen remembered that Alan, her youngest, was only a newborn baby when she had buried her first-born, Matthew. Less than two years later she had gone back to church for her husband Ignatius’s funeral. Ignatius had been chatting to her under the chenette tree when he leaned forward and collapsed in front of her, a lifeless heap. The man had barely reached his half-century. Matthew gone. Ignatius gone. Now the diminished family was preparing to pay its last respects to her sweet baby Alan.

  Why hadn’t the Lord taken her instead? Why was she made to suffer the anguish of burying a husband and two – yes, two – sons? And there had been other, less visible losses. Between Matthew’s birth and Alan’s, a span of twenty years, only one baby, little Robin, had made it to full term alive. Six miscarriages. Six babies who never made it into her arms. Still, a brood of three boys was a reasonable show. The Lord was merciful, and just as he took away her Matthew he had given her a consolation prize. She regretted that it had taken Alan’s death for her to accept that gift.

  As she moved about the living room, adjusting a chair here and a curtain there, she soothed herself with a lullaby she used to sing to her babies.

  Dodo petit popo

  Mammy gone to town