He made me think. “It’s sad, though,” I told him.
“So, okay, my turn. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” He tried to turn, and I swatted him again with the comb.
“Ow. Okay, you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to, but I’m curious.”
“Now I’m curious too.”
“Seriously. How’d you end up in America working for Sol and Miriam? Your folks are still back on the island, right? What, you just got on a plane and came to Brooklyn?”
Funny how simple truth can be. “You know, that’s about right.” I told him about my aunt and my mother and Daddy and Helen; about leaving home; about the scary flight; and about my cousin not picking me up at JFK.
He turned again. “Wait, no one picked you up?”
I didn’t spank him. “Nope.”
“And you were how old?”
“Sixteen.”
“Jesus, Grace. So what did you do?”
“I took a cab to Brooklyn to a friend’s house.”
“What do you mean you took a cab? To which friend? What happened?”
“Dave”—I pushed his head forward and started plaiting again—“you sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes, Grace. I do. . . . Tell me the whole story.”
The whole story. Kathy knew pieces—Sylvia and Mora too—but I’d never told the entire tale from beginning to end. How could I? It was still a story without an end. I took a breath, made a fresh part the length of Dave’s head, and thought back to waiting for my cousin.
“Well, once upon a time . . .”
“Cut it out, Grace. Be straight with me.”
I decided not to point out the joke in what he had just said. “Well, okay. I waited for almost three hours, and then a man in a trench coat came up and asked if everything was all right. He had the bluest eyes, and I knew enough to know that men in those kinds of coats are usually trouble, so I told him everything’s fine, thank you. Then a taxi driver who turned out to be from Trinidad asked me if I was all right. I told him I was waiting for my cousin, but for hours. He asked me if I didn’t have her phone number. You know, the country mook that I was I didn’t even think to call. Without me even asking, he gave me a handful of unfamiliar change and showed me where the phones were. Man, I called and called, and the coins kept falling into the return slot. The taxi driver was gone and the trench coat man came back and then I noticed he was wearing a badge. I told him my call wasn’t going through, and he said I didn’t need to dial the area code. Next try went through, and I got my cousin’s answering machine. I left her a message. I left her about five messages. And then I remembered some other telephone numbers I had. My friend Colette had come to America just before me with her family. Her youngest sister, the one who’s a little touched in the head, answered, and she yelled to Colette that Gracie was on the phone. I heard Colette say, ‘Gracie better not be calling collect, you know.’ At first she didn’t believe I was at JFK. Then she said hang up let her call her mother at work and to call her back in ten minutes. I called back in seven. Her mother said to take a taxi and come to their house immediately. Don’t talk to anyone.
“I went up to a taxi driver and told him I need to go to Rockaway Parkway, please, but I only have this money, and I showed him the traveler’s checks my mother had got from the bank in Penal. He put my suitcase in his trunk, locked his car, and took me to a counter in the airport to cash the checks. Then we drove into Brooklyn, the two of us alone in this black car as big as the prime minister’s limo. The driver asked me if this was my first time in America. When I told him yes, he looked at his watch and at me in the rearview. ‘Make some Bajan friends,’ he said. ‘Bajans won’t steer you wrong. Trinis like to party too much.’ I said ‘yes,’ but nothing else because I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to see America.
“He charged me fifty dollars but took only forty-five saying that the five dollars off was a welcome-to–New York discount. Colette opened the door before I could ring the bell, and the first thing she did was pick a wild licorice leaf out of my hair and say, ‘You bring the bush with you, girl.’
“Dave?”
“Uh-huh?”
“You’re very quiet. You still listening?”
“Go on, Grace Jones. I’m listening.”
“Upstairs, I kept calling my cousin, and finally at around four-thirty she answered. Turns out she couldn’t get the time off from the bank to pick me up and another sister was supposed to meet me—unfortunately, she is something called a crackhead. I was to take another taxi, a cab she called it, and come over to her house. I was so relieved. I finally looked around Colette’s tiny apartment. She lived with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend, two sisters, and a child aunt. The second bedroom had two double-decker beds and not much space for anything else. Fat chairs covered with plastic stuffed the living room to the walls, and the whole place seemed like a dolly house. My suitcase had to stay out in the hallway.
“So, finally, finally I got to my cousin’s apartment, which you know is just down here on Bedford. It’s early evening of a long day. I’m in a daze. This morning I was in the village and now I have no idea where I am. She has a nice two-bedroom apartment, but it’s just my cousin and her son and now me. We can all fit here nicely, I thought. He was playing Nintendo Duck Hunt, and together we shot and killed ducks flying on-screen. She went out to get Chinese for dinner. Delicious pork-fried rice and sweet and sour chicken, food you only ate back home if you went to some fancy function. I gave her the presents my mother sent and took a few things out of my suitcase. We talked, and then I started falling asleep on the couch, so she showed me where I am to stay, the top bunk in her son’s room.
“The next morning my cousin came into the room and asked what my plans were. Well—and I was a little shy in front of this, after all, stranger—show me what you usually make your son for lunch, maybe the shop you use, and, oh, where his school is of course. The things I need to know to help you mind him, right? And maybe tomorrow take me to register for high school. She made this face I recognize, and I think we really are cousins in truth, but then she says, ‘I told my mother not to get me mixed up in her business. You can’t stay here with me. I need my privacy, and my son needs his space. I did my part. I got you off the island, but I can’t have no sixteen-year-old girl living in my house, and you looking like that.’
“I wanted to say, ‘Can we call your mother, my aunt, and see what she says? And how do I look?’ Also I want to tell her, ‘This wasn’t the plan,’ but I don’t say anything. She told me I could stay for a couple of days, but no more than that. Then she made her son a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and took him to school herself.”
“Grace,” Ben piped up. “I could have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”
“Only if you give me the magic word!”
“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!” Sandwich in hand, Ben ran off. Dave turned to me and smiled.
“At least I ran up her phone bill,” I said, laughing.
“First I rang the woman on the hill and told her to get my mother. That involved waiting for a taxi to pass, sending a message up the Quarry Road, and then waiting for my mother to come back. I told her I would call back at noon. Then I rang Colette, who was gone to school, but her mother, Hyacinth, was home, so I thanked her for yesterday and told her my today problem. ‘Talk to your cousin again tonight,’ she says, ‘then call back.’
“At noon I call my mother, and she sounds so genuinely happy to hear my voice, I will myself not to cry. I tell her that my cousin won’t keep me, and we end up arguing on the phone. My mother of course wants me to get on the next plane and come back. Change my flight and come home. I tell her let me at least stay out the duration of my ticket. Let me at least spend a little holiday. I’m sure Colette’s mother will keep me for three weeks. My mother is hysterical, and I hang up the phone. I stay inside all day, find Channel Two and watch The Young and the Restless, eat nasty cold Chinese for lunch because I don�
��t know how to operate the microwave, then the food upsets my belly and I break the flush toilet. When she comes in that evening with her son, my cousin hasn’t changed her mind.
“I call Hyacinth again, take a cab over to their house, where the first thing she tells me is that I can’t stay there for long, which is obvious because their place is a rabbit hole already filled with people, but I may stay for the three-week duration of my ticket if I’m going home when my time is up. So I lied and said of course I’ll go home, at least I got to see America and snow. The second thing she says is that taxi ride from the airport shouldn’t have been more than twenty dollars. When Colette offers to make drawer space, Hyacinth says it’ll be easier if I just take things out of my suitcase as I need them.
“Still, they were all so nice to me. I did all the housework during the days, and on Christmas morning I even had a gift under their tree, a white cardigan two sizes too big. Then the Indian woman next door, Seema, she’s from the island too, said she needed someone to hold her job in Jersey the week between Christmas and New Year’s while she tried out something new. Everyone agreed that I should do it because I’d make one hundred and fifty dollars. That, together with my traveler’s checks, should give me enough money to go shopping before I go back home. So I went to Highland Park, New Jersey, with Seema, who on the bus told me she’d say I was eighteen, but if her boss lady Mora ever found out my real age, she’d say I lied to her too.
“As I was fixing my suitcase to leave, Colette asked me to plait her hair like I used to back in the village. While I’m plaiting she says to me that I shouldn’t worry. I had come to America before Jesus was ready for me to come, and that, for as long as she’d known me, I had always been in a hurry to do things before Jesus was ready for me to do them. Look how long it had taken for her to come and stay with her mother. Just go back home and wait, and Jesus would let me know when the time was right.”
Telling everything took a long time, and Dave didn’t interrupt. Finally, I tightened up the last plait, liking the way the thin black braids contrasted against his pale scalp. Ben had long before fallen asleep on Dave’s lap, and I tapped Dave with the comb. “Hey, rasta, you awake?”
He turned to stare at me, his mouth open, and I laughed when I saw his hair from the front. He was dead serious though. “Grace, my God. I had no idea—”
But I cut him off. “Of course you didn’t. I don’t tell people as soon as I meet them: Hello. I was abandoned at the airport and then my cousin kicked me out.” I laughed again. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. Sometimes I think it was all for the better that she told me to leave, you know?”
Dave gave me a crazy look. “No. I don’t know that at all. But how did you manage? What did you do? How old were you? Sixteen? And all alone in New York. That cabbie could have decided— Let me not even think that. But do you know how many people, especially young girls, just disappear in New York City?” He made a face and repeated my cousin’s line the morning she’d told me I needed to leave. “And you looking like that. Grace, do you know how lucky you are?”
I had yet to feel lucky.
“You know something, Grace? You remind me of Vincent.”
This came as a surprise. “How?”
“He wasn’t scared of anything. Not his father or the thugs he grew up around. And such an optimist. To hear him tell it, everything was always going to be all right.” Dave paused. “It’s good to not know fear,” he said, almost to himself. “So, Grace Jones. Now you’re in America, but what are your plans? I mean your long-term plans.”
The time had come to leave Eden, and I thought over Dave’s words as I put Ben’s bag together, wondering if maybe I shouldn’t be scared. “Sol and Miriam are sponsoring me. I’ll go to school. Live, I guess.” I didn’t know how else to put it.
He stopped on the path. “No going back home?”
I kept walking. “Nothing to go back home for.”
“And this sponsorship business with Sol and Miriam, how long will that take?”
“Donkey years. I’ve heard eight, ten. A long time.”
He lay Ben in the back of the truck without a seat belt and didn’t answer until he sat behind the wheel. “But, Grace, this means that you have to stay with Sol and Miriam for all this time. What if they move, if Miriam starts, hah, starts acting crazy? What will you do then?”
“Dave, it’s not like I have a choice.”
“Come on, Grace, there’s always a choice. How old are you now, seventeen?”
“I’m eighteen.”
“Eighteen. Look at that. You’re young, pretty, and one of the smartest people I know. Think about what you’re saying. Do you really want to work for Sol and Miriam until you’re almost thirty?”
Did I really want to work for Sol and Miriam until I was almost thirty? It was a stupid question, and it made me furious. Dave didn’t understand. But then, he lived at the top of the world. I didn’t expect him to.
“Now you’re mad at me,” he said. “Don’t be, I’m just trying to help you think of options. Grace, who knows where Sol and Miriam will be in ten years? In even one year?”
He pulled into the tower’s driveway, and I jumped out and got Ben. Dave came and stood next to me. “Grace, please listen.”
But I didn’t want to listen. To him or to anyone else. Duke was doing his best to see us through the glass. “I’ll see you later, okay, Dave? Give the purple anthuriums a little water tomorrow.” He left the car in the driveway and walked behind me to the front door, but I wouldn’t turn around. In the elevator I found that I didn’t want to cry. I was just mad and had the bitter taste of pretzels and grape soda choking my throat.
Chapter 31
I stayed mad at Dave, but in truth I was more annoyed at myself. I felt like I was a spinning top in mud. I didn’t know what I was doing or what I wanted or where anything was leading. And to make matters worse, Kath, who was all I had ever had in America, was talking about going home.
Fridays before I went to Sylvia’s, I stopped at Kath’s room. She’d quit her job and was spending her time lying on her unmade bed undoing the rhinestone patterns she had dazzled into almost every piece of clothing she owned. At first she had wanted me to take her job. But I wouldn’t.
“Grace, don’t be stupid. It’s twice the money you make. Leave them.” Her hair, uncombed for weeks, was almost dreaded down around her shoulders.
“Yeah, Kath, but it’s live out. I’d have to come home to Sylvia’s every evening. When was the last time you saw her apartment? Place is a madhouse with all the construction. Where are your combs?”
She waved a lock of her hair at me. “Dumb-dumb, you wouldn’t have to stay at Sylvia’s anymore because you’d be able to afford your own place. It’s three seventy-five a week they pay; you could probably get four hundred.”
The big money I could earn at Kath’s job made me pause. In two months, I could have enough saved to send for my father. I could get a room like the one Kath had for less than a hundred dollars a week, and I’d never have to see Sol and Miriam again. I’d miss Ben, but I’d probably see him in the park every day. And, if I felt like it ever again, I’d be able to visit Dave in the evenings after work. But I couldn’t leave.
“I can’t do it, Kath.”
“Grace, why?”
Had she really forgotten? I couldn’t tell anymore with Kath. The weight she’d lost after the abortion hadn’t come back. Her skin was gray and her lips cracked, as if now, in July, a winter wind blew just for her.
“My papers, Kath. You know they’re doing the sponsorship. I can’t leave now. Hey”—I rushed on before she could answer—“what about you? When are you and that guy getting married?”
“Please”—Kath’s voice was scornful—“I’m not doing that anymore.”
She hadn’t told me this. “You’re not?”
She shook her head slowly. “Nope. The license expired after thirty days, anyhow. I forget all about that, Grace.”
“But, Kath, so
what are you going to do?”
And that was the first time I’d heard her say it. “I’m ready to go home, Grace.”
“Home?”
“Ow, Grace, don’t pull.”
“Sorry. But what are you talking about? You can’t go back to the island.”
“Give me one good reason why not.”
Because if you left I’d be alone in the world.
“What would Donovan say?”
“Come on, Grace. I said a good reason. And besides, he’d be relieved if I left here. He’s only still around because he feels guilty for what happened.” Kath twisted to look at me, and her hardened face made me miss my old friend. “Well, don’t you want to know why he feels guilty?”
“Why?”
“Because he ruined my fucking life, that’s why.” And then she hung her head and cried, her whole body shaking as she sobbed for everything lost.
Later we ordered from Gloria’s. As I inhaled a plate of rice and oxtails, I watched Kath take apart a chicken roti without actually eating more than a few curried channa. She fussed with the food as if she intended to eat, but in the end she had three piles on her place, roti scraps, shredded chicken, and potato and channa.
“So how long you been thinking about this, Kath?” I couldn’t believe she was serious.
She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. It was always in the back of my mind.”
“From before Court Street?” Neither of us ever spoke of the abortion by name.
Kath picked up a piece of chicken. “My father has been trying to get me to come home for a year now, Grace.”
“Oh, Lord, he thinking about running again?” The big man in South Trinidad had twice run for mayor of our borough.
“And, we’re opening up a new store.”
“But, Kath, how long now you’re here?” I knew exactly, remembered Mora handing me the phone and, expecting my mother on the line, hearing Kath instead, telling me she was in Brooklyn. “You know if you go home you won’t be able to come back for ages, right?”
Minding Ben Page 30
