She has her plan, a perfectly reasonable plan, something any normal woman could do, she could not be reproached for it, even though Walter made her feel that it was strange to set off on her own, some strange quirk she will cure herself of if she knows what’s good for her. She is hot and she is going to the caves to cool down. She is going to take the tour and come back up and have a couple of rums in the cool of the cave bar. She is going to tip well, and make it worth the tour guide’s time. And then she is going to take a real taxi back, with a real driver, one certified by the Jamaican government.
She opens her eyes, sees that they’re going by the farmers’ market. The vegetable and fruit stands are deserted in the heat. Small girls in pretty cotton dresses sit on the laps of tired women. One woman is braiding her daughter’s hair, and the little girl shoos flies away from her mother’s face with a palm leaf.
The car’s sudden braking pitches Odette forward. “What,” she says, and then sees an elderly white man standing in the middle of the road. He is cursing in patois, banging on the hoods of slow-moving cars to make them stop. The old man has liver spots all over his neck and face, and he’s carrying a small basket full of red snappers.
“Dem is backraw,” Wesley says.
“Pardon me?” This old man must play baccarat, although she can’t imagine it, can’t imagine what this old, stooped, cursing man has to do with a game she associates with Ian Fleming, who lived here, and whose writing Walter admires.
“Baccarat?”
“Yeh mon,” Wesley says, accelerating now, dodging a few of the goats who are heading towards the trash cans in front of the Ocho Rios Burger King. “We call dem backraw. In slavery days, dem whites used to whip da slave. And da slave can take no mo, an say, no mo, mastah, mi back is raw.” Wesley shakes his head. “Dat’s why we call ’em backraw, dem white Jamaicans.”
Wesley’s eyes in the rearview mirror are vacant, he’s intent on getting up the steep hill. The car strains and groans in too low a gear. As they reach the top of the hill, they can see the pale blue-green water of a bay. It flashes in the sun, light hitting the crests of waves.
“Discovery Bay,” Wesley says.
Odette nods, and closes her eyes again.
“Discover dis, discover dat, o’body move, everybody body move. Body move.” Wesley stops singing as suddenly as he’s started. “You wonderin’ what dat ting is?”
Odette opens her eyes and sees his brown eyes in the rearview mirror. His buckteeth make him look hungry. Odette wipes the sweat from her eyes, tries to swallow, but her mouth is too dry. Wesley grabs the long plush thing dangling from his mirror.
“It’s advertisin’,” he says. “It’s trut’ in advertisin’.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s trut’ in advertisin’.” He laughs, flicks the long plush thing with his fingers, and then reaches for his crotch.
At first, what he says hardly penetrates her fog. And then in glimmers, as the sunlight flashes on fields of sugar cane, bounces on the hood of the car, she realizes that he must think she’s one of those white women who come down south to get what they can’t get at home. Odette has seen them in the bar at Hotel Americana on calypso nights, the yearning in their eyes, their pale skin, and then within a week, a look of frayed abundance on their tanned faces. Some of them stay on. Grow hopelessly freckled and despondent. “I’m not,” she says, but then she is afraid of saying anything, afraid of assuming, of creating a situation. So often, she doesn’t understand what Jamaicans are saying, so she smiles and tries to build bridges of affable ignorance. This doesn’t seem to be called for, at the moment.
“Money back guaranteed,” Wesley says. “A good ride, mon. Wesley king of the good ride. You wantin’ a good ride?”
“No,” she says, as simply and as gently as she can. Must never make them angry, men. Be polite, but firm. She is fifty-four years old, a grandmother, this is what she’s got to get him to understand, it’s all in the eyes, those messages.
Wesley’s watching her, his eyes serious.
“Are you wantin’ da good ride, missus? Mi know you wantin’ da good strong ride. Wesley know. Wesley de best. Wesley make you say yes.”
“No,” she says. “My husband.” And now it’s as if she is losing herself, retreating into some very old part of herself while her body sits there, hollow.
“Fifty American dollar. Money back guaranteed. I know da ladies, I know da ladies want Wesley. Sometimes a lady say no at first, but Wesley stir it up.”
His eyes are mechanical and mean. He’s pushing now, pushing way beyond the sale. He can feel her fear. She can tell he can feel her fear, but there’s nothing she can do.
“No, thank you,” she says.
She is holding on to her hands, because her hands want to reach up and hit the back of his head. Hit it and crush it. She holds on to the vinyl seat. He is so young, still a boy, she says to herself. Look, look, this is just a hungry boy.
“Mi needin’ da ride,” he says. “Mi needin’ it bad.”
The rearview mirror reflects his brown eyes. It has nothing to do with her, this cold hate in his eyes, it is what lies beyond the threshold of not caring about anything. He’s stopped caring about the game of his sale, he’s stepped off the edge of the deal into something ancient in himself.
Odette is shaking now, it starts in her knees and creeps up to her shoulders. Nobody would know if he dragged her off somewhere, nobody knows she’s in this cab, nobody saw her leave. She can see herself in the hot sun, flies on her wounds. Nothing more. Coming to this. Her death spelled out in a tawdry headline in The Gleaner, picked up by wire services, carried worldwide, accountable for a small dip in the tourist industry, then forgotten. She sees everyone at Villa La Mar asking why didn’t she know, why didn’t she get out of the taxi, why didn’t she run. And the shame on Walter’s face. Only it is not Walter’s face she sees now but her mother’s shamed face, her mother talking about the devil, the devil.
She is heaving now. Can’t help herself. Dry heaves into her hands, the tape in her head saying I’m going to die, I’m going to die. She can feel herself floating up and up beyond the roof of the car, watching herself from far away, watching the flowers of her print dress spread over her body like a funereal mantle.
“Please,” she says, “please stop the taxi. I’m going to be sick.”
The roof of the car is turning into a pale white ceiling, the ceiling of a room when she was so little. Something wants to come out, but she can’t allow it to come out. Because it can’t be true.
“Stop,” she says in a dead voice. “Stop it.”
Wesley stops the taxi on the dusty shoulder above Discovery Bay.
They are not far from the caves. Odette can see the sign, up the hill, above the white pillars of the gate. Slowly, pushing herself through an underwater world, she opens the car door.
Wesley opens his door and steps out so that he stands directly in front of her. His cut-off shorts are held up by a piece of twine. He is playing with the ends of the twine.
The heaving stops. For the first time she can see his face full on, a lean, young, dormant face. His dark eyes are spinning with possibilities, looking at her through a kaleidoscope, her body jumping like coloured chips.
“Get away from me,” she says. And then she is screaming into his face, so hard her face feels distorted, raw. “Get off of me, now, get off!”
He brings up his hands slowly. He doesn’t seem to know why he’s stopped here, on top of the hill. He’s backed off from his game, and now he’s trying to make it seem like she’s crazy.
“Don’t you look at me like that,” she says, and crumples a ten-dollar bill and throws it in the driver’s side.
“Chill out, mon,” she hears him saying. “No problem.” But she’s already walking away, in the sunlight, feet on the ground. And after a while, when the thud on the back of her hea
d doesn’t materialize, she looks back and sees Wesley turning the car around, heading back towards town. Shaking, she walks towards the gates.
JANINE
~
August
The fever started in the afternoon. Marie-Ange had been playing in the sandbox. At first Janine thought Marie-Ange was hot from the sun, but no, she was much hotter than that, and limp, and her lips looked chalky.
Jim was out of town, giving an estimate on a renovation. Claudine was in Quebec City. Audrey, who lived across the street with her husband and twins Marie-Ange’s age, was away at her mother’s place.
Janine bundled up Marie-Ange and took her upstairs and laid her down on her bed. Marie-Ange was crying now, hiccupping and crying, and Janine could feel the crying in herself, and the heat of her own body. She took Marie-Ange’s wet, sandy shorts off, and peeled off her T-shirt, a gift from Odette that said If You Think I’m Cute Wait Until You See My Mother. It was so embarrassing, but Marie-Ange liked it because it had a picture of a smiling cat on it.
“What hurts, honey, what hurts?” she said. But Marie-Ange looked at her blankly and pointed to her neck.
Janine gave her some Tempra and stroked her moist forehead. She started to cry again when Janine left the room to get the electric fan from downstairs. Of all things, she didn’t want to be alone with this, alone with a sick child, with cries she couldn’t interpret, with her mind going to meningitis and rheumatic fever and all the things that could go wrong.
“Mummy, Mummy,” Marie-Ange cried.
“I’m coming,” Janine yelled from downstairs, carrying the fan.
She plugged in the fan, watched the blades going around behind the silver grille, watched it turn from left to right, a giant head turning this way and that.
She lay down beside Marie-Ange and Marie-Ange clung to her pale yellow shirt with her tiny fists. It took a long time, but Marie-Ange fell asleep, a facecloth on her forehead, the fan’s motion blowing back the wet tendrils of dark hair from her face. Janine gently unclasped Marie-Ange’s hands and went downstairs to fix herself something to eat and to look up diseases in Dr. Spock.
AT TEN-THIRTY THAT NIGHT, Janine is in a panic. Marie-Ange has woken up many times, and has had to be walked back to sleep. Now she is asleep, but her face is red and her chest is heaving too quickly.
She dials Colin’s number. The line is busy. She tries again fifteen minutes later. It rings only once.
“Hello,” she says.
“Darlin’, I just got in,” he says. “I missed you at the Rivoli.”
“It’s not Claudine, it’s Janine.”
“Oh, sorry, I’m confused, I just got in.”
“I’m sorry. I just didn’t know who else to call.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Marie-Ange is sick and Jim is away, she’s so hot, she’s burning and I don’t know what to do. Should I take her to Emergency? I’m so scared, Colin. She’s burning up and her breathing —”
“Okay, okay, hold on a minute here. What’s her temperature?”
“She won’t let me. I mean, I can’t take it. I mean, she, I don’t know. Tell me she’s going to be okay, tell me she’s not going to die.”
“She’s not going to die, Janine. Where is she now?”
“She’s in my bed, asleep, but she’s going to wake up again. She didn’t sleep well last night either, I didn’t know this was coming on, I’m completely exhausted.”
“All right, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to make us a pot of tea, and I’ll be right there.”
“Thank you.”
Janine goes upstairs to the bathroom. Something is nagging at her, the Rivoli, that’s it, he said something about the Rivoli. Is Claudine back and at the Rivoli? He would have said if she was. Strange. She takes off her yellow shirt and looks through the hamper for her white lacy camisole, which is not really dirty, just has a stain at the bottom. It can be tucked into her pearly grey skirt. She brushes her hair and puts it up loosely, like a Gibson girl, and applies a little mascara. She looks tanned and fresh. Maybe she should look tired.
Oh god what am I doing, she says to herself, smoothing her eyebrows with a finger. She tiptoes past her bedroom, peeks in at Marie-Ange. Her whole body is straining to keep Marie-Ange asleep. Please, just an hour.
In the living room, she looks around for what she should be reading. She hides the Danielle Steel in Marie-Ange’s toybox, picks up Jim’s book on tessellations in Escher’s work, lies on the couch, plumps a pillow behind her, opens the book. The pictures make her dizzy, all those cubes and diamonds and frogs turning into salamanders. Her fingers, turning the glossy pages, are moist.
The tea, my god, she’s forgotten the tea. She puts the book down and rushes into the kitchen. Can’t be all made up and not have the tea ready. What would he think? It’s been at least half an hour since Marie-Ange has woken up. Maybe she’s all right after all. Maybe the worst is over now.
COLIN HAS A FRESH shirt on. Must be a fresh shirt, it is pale blue and not wilted and crushed by heat. He smells clean. That feels better. He’s trying, too. When he walked in, after knocking softly, she had this moment, standing by the door, of feeling like a courtesan, rouged and powdered and wearing silk pyjamas. Now that they’re in the kitchen, and she’s pouring tea, she feels calmer, more like herself.
“I guess I kind of panicked,” she says.
“It’s understandable,” he says. “Kids get such high fevers. But it means nothing. It means their bodies are fighting like crazy to get rid of something.”
“I know. But when you’re alone, your mind can go to some pretty awful places.”
“Why are we whispering?”
“Not to wake her up.” She pulls a chair out from the kitchen table, sits down beside him and pours two cups of tea.
“Feels like church,” he says.
“I always fainted in church.”
“Why?”
“You were supposed to wait three hours before swimming, I mean communion, or is it the other way around, three for swimming, one for communion? Anyway I was hungry, always so hungry, and I’d faint, my knees would buckle and I’d pitch forward, an awful feeling, isn’t it, fainting, all hot and cold afterwards.”
“Janine, are you nervous?” He pushes his hair back and looks straight at her.
She looks down at her tea. “No. Yes. Well, maybe a little.” She feels naked in her white camisole.
“Poor darlin’,” he says. “You’re all worn down.” He warms his hands on his tea mug, stands and walks behind her chair, puts his hands on her shoulders. “Here, here, let me do this. I think the mum needs more attention than the kid.”
Her neck feels delicate, she can imagine the back of her head as it looks to him. “Oh,” she says. He caresses the top of her shoulders, slips his fingers under the camisole straps and spreads them out so that they catch on her shoulder. She has gone completely still. She never ever wants this to stop. Just as she begins to relax to his touch, a slow massage carrying warm waves down into her belly, he stops, and runs a finger along her neck.
“You have a mosquito bite on your neck,” he says. “Right here.”
“Oh yeah?” She has to pretend it’s just a massage. “I don’t know when that happened, must have been when I was out in the yard.”
He’s caressing the back of her head now, and her hands on her lap are sweating.
“Sorry,” he says, “I have to kiss it better,” and brings his head down on her neck and kisses her, and then before she knows what’s happened she is standing up, and he is kissing her against the kitchen counter, running his hands down her back, her breasts, her belly. She feels lost now. His hands are caressing her thighs underneath her grey skirt, and he brings one of her legs up, around him, so that she is standing like a swooning stork.
“I can’t,” she says, “I can
’t do this.”
“You’re so soft, so soft.”
The smell of him is so familiar, some aftershave, his lips are so hungry, as hungry as hers. “Oh, we can’t do this,” she moans. But he takes her hands and brings her down so that they both end up sitting on the floor and she is sitting on top of him, her legs wrapped around his waist. They are pushing against each other, breathing fast now. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, “so beautiful.” “Oh god,” she says.
And then they both hear it, and she stops and goes still, but he’s still pressing himself against her, saying so good, so good, so good. “I’m not like this,” she says, “this is not me.” He holds her away from him. “This is you,” he says. And looks right into her eyes.
They are breathing so hard it’s difficult to hear. “I think she’s crying,” she says. “Colin, listen. Listen. I’ve got to go up.”
“Hunh, hunh,” he says, hanging on to himself. “Please. Can I have a rain check.”
She gets up, quickly and awkwardly, and now she’s standing above him, smoothing her clothes, and she doesn’t know what he means, rain check, what rain check? Marie-Ange’s crying has made her body switch tracks. All of the feelings of wanting him have turned into panicked guilt. “Ah, I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know. I got to go.”
She runs up the stairs, rounds the top banister, pulled faster and faster by Marie-Ange crying Mummy, Mummy, Mummy. The room is dark. She turns on the light. Her guilt takes in Marie-Ange, red and crying, twisted in a white sheet. “Oh, my poor baby,” she says. “My poor, poor baby.”
THEY DIDN’T GO TO Emergency. Colin said that if they took her to Emergency they would just have to wait in that awful harsh light, and they’d probably just take her temperature and send her home. Marie-Ange wasn’t complaining about her ears or about her throat, so it couldn’t be an ear infection or strep throat. She must just be fighting off a bug.
Voice-Over Page 18
