I turned to face her full-on. “Looka that skin, Sivia. She look pretty just like you. I remember you long time. Long time you look just like this your daughter.” She looked at me again and wagged that bony finger from last night. “Don’t get fat like Mother, you hear. You eat good and do exercise”—she pumped her arms—“stay skinny like model.”
Sylvia laughed and, taking the change, played along with the lie. “Yes, Sue,” she rasped, “this one is my firstborn. I make she in my youthful days. She was living with my mother back home until I send for she.”
Neither of them seemed to mind that the line had lengthened. Micky showed Dame the little dried herrings, and Derek tried to juggle mangoes. Sylvia paid and passed me the bags she wanted me to bring home. As I turned to walk out of the store, the woman picked up a pack of preserved cherries. “Here,” she said, giving me the bag. “You eat this. Salty, not sweet. You not get fat you eat salty. Make sure you go to school, huh. Come doctor.” I took the cherries and didn’t thank her, figuring that, if she knew I was Sylvia’s daughter, she would think I was boldface just like my fat mother.
AT EXACTLY THREE I rang the lady on the hill. My mother answered the phone. “Hello, good afternoon.” The similarity of our voices always startled me a little; talking with my mother was like talking to myself.
“Hello, Mammy?”
“Gracie, is you? How you going, girl?”
“I good. Things going good.” I told her right away, “I get a work this week.”
“All praises due to Jesus. What I tell you in the last letter? Not to leave everything in Jesus hand?” She paused and sang, “He never failed me yet, he never failed me yet, my Jesus never failed me yet.”
“Well,” I countered, “Jesus and the ad I put in the paper.”
“But if it wasn’t for Jesus . . .”
“Okay, Mammy. So what going on? I get your letter when I come last night. How you? How Daddy? Helen? She come with you?”
“No.” Her voice filled with sorrow, and my stomach tightened. “Poor thing. She had to run San Fernando to take some clean towels for Daddy. You know they never have anything in that half-pital.”
“So tell me about Daddy, then. When he gone back in? Tell me everything, okay, from the beginning.” I had to tell my mother to tell me everything or else she would spend the entire call telling me about the will of the Lord and punctuating the sermon with snatches of hymns.
“What I tell you in the letter? I tell you not to worry. Dr. Beard say the sugar a touch too high, just a touch, and he send him for some tests.”
“In the letter you say the pressure high, not the sugar, Mammy.”
“What is the difference? Pressure, sugar, groceries, everything high.” This is what she did to torture me, to make me want to knock the telephone against my front teeth.
“Mammy”—I tried for some of the patience Sylvia always requested of the Lord—“just answer what I ask, okay. Since Daddy gone to the hospital, what the doctor in San Fernando say?”
“You don’t have to talk to me so, Gracie.”
I tried to unhinge my locked jaw. “You right, is just that I so far and I don’t know what going on, Ma.” I knew she was biting her tongue, dying to tell me come home then.
“I wish you was here,” she said. “You remember Dr. Silverton from ward six? The cut-foot ward?”
“Yes. Why he in six if is just the pressure and the sugar? He should be in four.” One for mad people; two, a.k.a. slip and slide, for green papaya abortions gone wrong and other woman troubles; three for cancer; four for pressure; five for children; six to cut; seven before the morgue. I was scared, and my left eye felt as though its icy blue humor was leaking into my skull.
“Give me a chance to talk,” my mother said. “He not in six. Dr. Silverton went and look for him down in four. He self take the pressure and test the urine and say everything looking good. Your father just too harden, Gracie. All he have to do is to eat what I give him and stop drinking that babash and everything will maintain. But he too harden. No matter how I pray and ask Jesus to give him understanding, he not open to the will of the Lord. You really take on he side, in truth.”
I chose to ignore that, wishing for one mouthful of Hamil’s babash. “So when he coming home?”
“We not sure, but when I went yesterday the nurse say they could discharge him Monday coming.”
At least that sounded promising. “How you doing for money?” I asked her.
“We managing. I sell a little ground provision from the big garden, and the government disability does help. But every time we take him clinic or hospital we have to hire a direct car. He can’t travel from taxi to taxi, and forget about bus.”
I knew passage back and forth would be hard on them, plus Helen traveling to school. The fares had been high when I was home and were probably higher now. “Okay, Mammy, before you go back home, go by the Western Union and collect some money. I get pay yesterday.”
“Gracie, you don’t have to do that. By the grace of God we will manage.” I knew she would say that.
“Well, Ma, maybe Jesus working through me. Maybe I get this job just in time to send you a little change. The Lord works in mysterious ways, right?” She ate this stuff like coo-coo from a calabash, and I expected her to start singing “I am delivered, praise the Lord.” Instead she thanked me and asked if Sylvia was there. “No, she and the children went by she sister. I here alone.” I checked the time on the VCR; we’d been talking for fifteen minutes already. “So how Helen and Na going? Anybody in the village dead?”
“Everybody home doing just fine. When was the last time we talk? December?”
“Early January.”
“You did hear Jango drown?” I hadn’t. “Yes, he and Badis oldest son, the crazy one with the wild wild hair and he shirt always open—you know which one I talking about?” I did. “Well, the two of them went out overnight and a tanker or a cruise ship or something pass and mash up the pirogue. Jango wash up in Quinam, but Badis boy didn’t come in. A few days later Rolly crew see the body far far out, near Venezuela, but they didn’t want to put that in they boat. People would stop buying fish from them.”
I knew she was right about that, but I started to think about Jango and Crazy Horse out in the middle of the sea holding on to splintered pieces of blue board, trying to stay afloat. Drifting apart from each other in the waves made rougher in the tanker’s wake and then sinking. “Jesus Christ, Mammy. How Jango wife?”
“How she going to be?” My mother did not chide me for using the Lord’s name in vain. “She holding on. She could only hold on.” She changed the topic. “So how the new people and them you working for?”
I didn’t need to give her any details about the Bruckners that would cause her to worry. “They okay so far. Is just the man, Solomon, and his wife, Miriam, and one son, Benjamin. I making thirty-five dollars more, though.”
She didn’t let me get away so easy. “Watch out for yourself and do what the lady tell you to do. Don’t wear no short short pants and tight jersey, you hear.”
I pressed my warm fingertips to my aching eye. I had never in my life worn hot pants or tight jerseys. “Is still cold outside, Mammy. Everybody wearing plenty clothes.”
She paused, then said, “Huh, all of them have name from the Bible, what religion they is?” I’d wondered how long it would take her to ask.
“Jews, just like Mora them.” When I’d first started working for Mora and I told my mother they were Jewish, she hadn’t understood. She’d kept asking again and again if they were real Jews. She couldn’t define what exactly she meant by “real Jews,” but I think she, we really, had sort of understood Jews to be people in the Bible, not a family of six living in a four-bedroom colonial with an aboveground pool in Highland Park, New Jersey. She had been full of questions about what they wore—not robes and sandals—and what they ate—not manna and dates. I had told her that the Speisers looked like regular white people, except they didn’t eat meat with
milk or cheese, and they went to service on Saturdays. My mother had asked, almost afraid to hear the answer, if they really and truly did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Lord and Savior and no man went to the Father but through him. Nope, I had told her. They didn’t believe a word of it. Mora told me the best they made of Christ was that he was a rogue Jew with a God complex.
“Why is it,” Mammy asked me now, “that you have to end up working for these people? This set look willing to hear the Gospel?”
I tried to picture telling Sol and Miriam the good news about Jesus and his love. “Okay, Ma, time to come off Sylvia phone. I going to send the money now, so go straight Penal and pick it up. Give Hel twenty. You have a pen?”
“Right in my purse.”
“Here, take my work number in case you need to call me during the week.”
“What I would need to call during the week for that can’t wait until weekend?”
“You never know, Mammy, just take it please.” I gave her the Bruckners’ number and had her repeat the digits back to me. “You going to see Daddy tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorrow is my turn. Plenty people from the village does go and see him to keep he courage up, so is good for them to see somebody from the family there.”
“Okay, so when you go, make sure and tell him I call and to behave and do what the doctor say. Tell him I get a work and I start saving for the thing again. Tell Helen don’t study too hard. Tell everybody hello. Okay, Mammy. Take care of yourself. Bye.”
“Gracie . . .”
“Yes, Ma?”
“Nothing. Bye.”
I hung up and made to jump into the space behind the couch, then didn’t. I should be home for this. Helen was sixteen and in the middle of exams, and my mother was getting old. How old was she now? Her hair was completely gray. I had no memory of her looking young. Before I came to America, I’d gone through some papers tucked far in the back of her wardrobe and found her birth certificate. I’d looked at the year and done the math. She was forty years old. Still young, but scared of the world beyond her village and the capricious vengeance of her Lord, who took away limbs and children and lives whenever his fancy struck.
Around six the phone rang, and I realized I had fallen asleep on the couch. I sat up, and the yellow receipt from Western Union slid from my belly onto the dead red floor.
“Hey, superstar, wha’ a go on?”
“Not a thing in the world,” I told Kath. “Talk Trini, please. I can’t understand Jamaican right now. You not going to believe what happened.”
“What happened?”
What had happened was that Sol and Miriam had paid me for only three days. All the time I had been thinking I had $200, they had given me only $120.
“What? Grace, call them one time.”
“And say what, Kath? And say what? If they don’t pay me the rest I not going to come back?” I’d only realized at Western Union. Over and over I did the math: $15 at the Korean’s, $30 for Sylvia, and $10 for Bo. I should have had $145, left, and no matter how many times I counted the bills in my hand, they added up to $65. One twenty and nine fives. “Nine fives, Kath. Tell me she didn’t do that on purpose. Nine fives in the middle.”
“Well, of course she do it on purpose, Grace. But what are you going to do?”
I knew I was going to do nothing at all.
Kath breathed hard for me. “Well, take some advice from a shopkeeper daughter, okay. Next time, count your money before you leave.
“You want to go out tonight with me and Donovan and Brent?”
I had sent my mother fifty U.S. dollars. She’d get about three hundred TT for that. Not much, but enough to help out. After the fee the balance from my salary was five dollars and change. “Kath, I want to go, but I just send money for Mammy.”
“How your mother?” she asked. Without waiting for my answer, she said, “Grace, we going out with two Jamaican man, at least one of them involved in illegal activities. You think you need to spend your own money? And don’t worry, we not going to a club, just dinner at Yardies. You ever been there?”
I had not. “Mammy good. Please don’t say ‘illegal activities’ when you on the phone with me. You never know who listening. I have to dress up?”
“No jeans and sneakers please. What is Sylvia address again?”
“God, I hope Sylvia doesn’t make a fuss about me going out.”
“What she have to fuss about? More food for her to eat tonight.” Kathy laughed.
I cracked up too. “You are one mean red nigger, Kath.”
“I know, but you love me anyway.”
Chapter 15
Kathy stood outside the building. “You look amazing,” she said as I pushed open the security door and stepped into the cold night. She pressed her palms to her hips. “I really need to stop eating so much.”
“You think I look all right?” I was wearing the one fancy dress I owned. Mora and I had gone with the kids to a mall in New Jersey, and she had insisted I try it on. The original price was $149.99, and, even marked down 50 percent, the dress was still too expensive. Her oldest son, Ben, had tried to wolf-whistle when I put it on. Hannah had said I had to get it, and Mora had put in forty dollars since it was her idea. The black, clingy jersey came to the middle of my thighs, and the back was cut to drape very low. I felt half naked.
“Where did you get that dress?”
“Saks. Fourth floor,” I said, and she cuffed my arm. “So, he in the car?”
“Waiting for you.” I started to shrug into my coat, and Kath yanked down on the hood. “What on earth are you doing?”
I didn’t think my action required an explanation.
“You’re spoiling the effect with this thing.” She flicked a finger against my coat. “Plus, we’re going in a direct car. You could take a little bit of cold.”
I thought briefly about the cost of curing pneumonia but took the coat off anyway. Kathy looked nice too. Not a hair strayed from her slick ponytail, and she had BeDazzled a black scrunchie with red rhinestones.
“Kath, I should have dress up more?”
“No, you look fine. Me and Donovan going to the Bronx after.”
Donovan honked the horn, and we walked toward the car. Kathy and I got in the back. A blast of reggae hit us, and a cloud of sweet, grassy smoke billowed out. The vibrating bass tapped me forward with every beat, and my “Good evening” was lost in Wayne Wonder’s melancholy melody for Jamaica-land. Donovan looked at us in the rearview and smiled. His gold tooth flashed in the mirror. Brent turned around, raised his chin, and winked. I grinned and hit Kathy a little too hard on her thigh. Both guys wore furry black Kangols angled to the left. I felt cool and New York sitting in the backseat with my girlfriend and our borrowed boys going out for a night on the town.
EVERYONE AT YARDIES KNEW Donovan. The owner, Barrington, greeted us at the door and walked us to our booth on an elevated platform. Donovan walked ahead, pounding raised fists and heads-upping the other diners. The restaurant was nice. A low dub bass pulsed out of big black speakers, and the walls were painted with lush ranges I thought to be Jamaica’s blue mountains. I wondered if the vegetation was supposed to be coffee or the other green plant Jamaica was famous for. The painting behind our booth was different. There, the Jamaican pantheon beamed down on us: Bob Marley mid-scant and dreadlocks flailing; Haile Selassie, wearing a gold crown and petting a lion; Marcus Garvey, stuffed into a tight suit and wearing a plumed military hat; and a topless black woman with amulets around her neck, a machete in one hand, and a shotgun in the other. The caption under her bare, broad feet read NANNY. I laughed.
“Wha’ so funny, darkie?” Brent asked.
He was good-looking. A little plump in his oversize Karl Kani denim outfit. His round brown eyes pulled down a touch at the corners and made him look sexy sad. A close-trimmed goatee framed his full lips. He had a nice smile and no gold teeth. I realized they were waiting for me to share my joke.
“The painting on the wall,�
� I said.
“Wha’ so funny so?” Donovan asked. “All ah them ah Jamaican ’eroes, you know.” He went through the group, squinting one eye and pointing, trigger fingered. “Ah, my man Robert Nestor; the honorable Marcus Garvey; ’Aile Selassie I, Rastafari; and that woman so, that is Nanny, the mother of Jamaica.”
I laughed again, and Kathy managed to smile and glare at me at the same time. “You never ’ear ’bout Nanny?” Donovan asked. He made the word sound like nahnih.
I had, and so had Kathy in Mr. Rajkumar’s sixth-form Caribbean history, but we shook our heads. “Uh-uh. Who was she? A runaway slave?”
“No sah.” Donovan leaned back and put his palms flat on the tablecloth. “Nanny was never nobody slave. Is plenty white man she kill, though. Ah not true, B-man?”
B-man agreed, and Donovan went on. “Nanny was a real Jamaican warrior woman, you know. Them bring she Jamaican to try and make she a slave, but Nanny say none of that for she.” He aimed at the mountain mural, and I wondered if he carried a real gun. “For years and years them white man ah try and catch Nanny up in ah Cockpit Country. Scene?”
“After a time,” Brent picked up, “them white man and them tired fight with Nanny crew. Them give them land up ina the ’ills and leave them alone. Up to now, it still have Nanny great, great, great, and more great grandchildren living up in them ’ill in a place name Nanny Town.”
“Well,” Kathy said, “if Nanny do so much for Jamaica, I find the least Barrington could do is paint her a shirt.”
We all laughed, and the beautiful Jamaican waitress, with a spit curl on her forehead, an impossibly short black skirt, and a white shirt unbuttoned almost to her navel, brought two slim bottles of cold Canei with compliments from Barrington. As she turned to leave, Donovan reached over and held on to her hand. She stopped and backed up. He tucked a bill up under her hem and patted her bottom. Kathy pretended she didn’t see anything.
Minding Ben Page 14
