The driver let her off at a scary intersection on Woodward Avenue and gave her instructions on how to get to the Plantations Motel in Southfield. The trick was to keep changing vehicles, he said. That threw off the immigration guys real quick.
Jasmine took money for cab fare out of the pocket of the great big raincoat that the van driver had given her. The raincoat looked like something that nuns in Port-of-Spain sold in church bazaars. Jasmine was glad to have a coat with wool lining, though; and anyway, who would know in Detroit that she was Dr. Vassanji’s daughter?
All the bills in her hand looked the same. She would have to be careful when she paid the cabdriver. Money in Detroit wasn’t pretty the way it was back home, or even in Canada, but she liked this money better. Why should money be pretty, like a picture? Pretty money is only good for putting on your walls maybe. The dollar bills felt businesslike, serious. Back home at work, she used to count out thousands of Trinidad dollars every day and not even think of them as real. Real money was worn and green, American dollars. Holding the bills in her fist on a street corner meant she had made it in okay. She’d outsmarted the guys at the border. Now it was up to her to use her wits to do something with her life. As her daddy kept saying, “Girl, is opportunity come only once.” The girls she’d worked with at the bank in Port-of-Spain had gone green as bananas when she’d walked in with her ticket on Air Canada. Trinidad was too tiny. That was the trouble. Trinidad was an island stuck in the middle of nowhere. What kind of place was that for a girl with ambition?
The Plantations Motel was run by a family of Trinidad Indians who had come from the tuppenny-ha’penny country town, Chaguanas. The Daboos were nobodies back home. They were lucky, that’s all. They’d gotten here before the rush and bought up a motel and an ice cream parlor. Jasmine felt very superior when she saw Mr. Daboo in the motel’s reception area. He was a pumpkin-shaped man with very black skin and Elvis Presley sideburns turning white. They looked like earmuffs. Mrs. Daboo was a bumpkin, too; short, fat, flapping around in house slippers. The Daboo daughters seemed very American, though. They didn’t seem to know that they were nobodies, and kept looking at her and giggling.
She knew she would be short of cash for a great long while. Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted to wear bright leather boots and leotards like Viola and Loretta. The smartest move she could make would be to put a down payment on a husband. Her daddy had told her to talk to the Daboos first chance. The Daboos ran a service fixing up illegals with islanders who had made it in legally. Daddy had paid three thousand back in Trinidad, with the Daboos and the mattress man getting part of it. They should throw in a good-earning husband for that kind of money.
The Daboos asked her to keep books for them and to clean the rooms in the new wing, and she could stay in 16B as long as she liked. They showed her 16B. They said she could cook her own roti; Mr. Daboo would bring in a stove, two gas rings that you could fold up in a metal box. The room was quite grand, Jasmine thought. It had a double bed, a TV, a pink sink and matching bathtub. Mrs. Daboo said Jasmine wasn’t the big-city Port-of-Spain type she’d expected. Mr. Daboo said that he wanted her to stay because it was nice to have a neat, cheerful person around. It wasn’t a bad deal, better than stories she’d heard about Trinidad girls in the States.
All day every day except Sundays Jasmine worked. There wasn’t just the bookkeeping and the cleaning up. Mr. Daboo had her working on the match-up marriage service. Jasmine’s job was to check up on social security cards, call clients’ bosses for references, and make sure credit information wasn’t false. Dermatologists and engineers living in Bloomfield Hills, store owners on Canfield and Woodward: she treated them all as potential liars. One of the first things she learned was that Ann Arbor was a magic word. A boy goes to Ann Arbor and gets an education, and all the barriers come crashing down. So Ann Arbor was the place to be.
She didn’t mind the work. She was learning about Detroit, every side of it. Sunday mornings she helped unload packing crates of Caribbean spices in a shop on the next block. For the first time in her life, she was working for a black man, an African. So what if the boss was black? This was a new life, and she wanted to learn everything. Her Sunday boss, Mr. Anthony, was a courtly, Christian, church-going man, and paid her the only wages she had in her pocket. Viola and Loretta, for all their fancy American ways, wouldn’t go out with blacks.
One Friday afternoon she was writing up the credit info on a Guyanese Muslim who worked in an assembly plant when Loretta said that enough was enough and that there was no need for Jasmine to be her father’s drudge.
“Is time to have fun,” Viola said. “We’re going to Ann Arbor.”
Jasmine filed the sheet on the Guyanese man who probably now would never get a wife and got her raincoat. Loretta’s boyfriend had a Cadillac parked out front. It was the longest car Jasmine had ever been in and louder than a country bus. Viola’s boyfriend got out of the front seat. “Oh, oh, sweet things,” he said to Jasmine. “Get in front.” He was a talker. She’d learned that much from working on the matrimonial match-ups. She didn’t believe him for a second when he said that there were dudes out there dying to ask her out.
Loretta’s boyfriend said, “You have eyes I could leap into, girl.”
Jasmine knew he was just talking. They sounded like Port-of-Spain boys of three years ago. It didn’t surprise her that these Trinidad country boys in Detroit were still behind the times, even of Port-of-Spain. She sat very stiff between the two men, hands on her purse. The Daboo girls laughed in the back seat.
On the highway the girls told her about the reggae night in Ann Arbor. Kevin and the Krazee Islanders. Malcolm’s Lovers. All the big reggae groups in the Midwest were converging for the West Indian Students Association fall bash. The ticket didn’t come cheap but Jasmine wouldn’t let the fellows pay. She wasn’t that kind of girl.
The reggae and steel drums brought out the old Jasmine. The rum punch, the dancing, the dreadlocks, the whole combination. She hadn’t heard real music since she got to Detroit, where music was supposed to be so famous. The Daboo girls kept turning on rock stuff in the motel lobby whenever their father left the area. She hadn’t danced, really danced, since she’d left home. It felt so good to dance. She felt hot and sweaty and sexy. The boys at the dance were more than sweet talkers; they moved with assurance and spoke of their futures in America. The bartender gave her two free drinks and said, “Is ready when you are, girl.” She ignored him but she felt all hot and good deep inside. She knew Ann Arbor was a special place.
When it was time to pile back into Loretta’s boyfriend’s Cadillac, she just couldn’t face going back to the Plantations Motel and to the Daboos with their accounting books and messy files.
“I don’t know what happen, girl,” she said to Loretta. “I feel all crazy inside. Maybe is time for me to pursue higher studies in this town.”
“This Ann Arbor, girl, they don’t just take you off the street. It cost like hell.”
She spent the night on a bashed-up sofa in the Student Union. She was a well-dressed, respectable girl, and she didn’t expect anyone to question her right to sleep on the furniture. Many others were doing the same thing. In the morning, a boy in an army parka showed her the way to the Placement Office. He was a big, blond, clumsy boy, not bad-looking except for the blond eyelashes. He didn’t scare her, as did most Americans. She let him buy her a Coke and a hotdog. That evening she had a job with the Moffitts.
Bill Moffitt taught molecular biology and Lara Hatch-Moffitt, his wife, was a performance artist. A performance artist, said Lara, was very different from being an actress, though Jasmine still didn’t understand what the difference might be. The Moffitts had a little girl, Muffin, whom Jasmine was to look after, though for the first few months she might have to help out with the housework and the cooking because Lara said she was deep into performance rehearsals. That was all right with her, Jasmine said, maybe a little too quickly. She explained she came from a big family an
d was used to heavy-duty cooking and cleaning. This wasn’t the time to say anything about Ram, the family servant. Americans like the Moffitts wouldn’t understand about keeping servants. Ram and she weren’t in similar situations. Here mother’s helpers, which is what Lara had called her—Americans were good with words to cover their shame—seemed to be as good as anyone.
Lara showed her the room she would have all to herself in the finished basement. There was a big, old TV, not in color like the motel’s and a portable typewriter on a desk which Lara said she would find handy when it came time to turn in her term papers. Jasmine didn’t say anything about not being a student. She was a student of life, wasn’t she? There was a scary moment after they’d discussed what she could expect as salary, which was three times more than anything Mr. Daboo was supposed to pay her but hadn’t. She thought Bill Moffitt was going to ask her about her visa or her green card number and social security. But all Bill did was smile and smile at her—he had a wide, pink, baby face—and play with a button on his corduroy jacket. The button would need sewing back on, firmly.
Lara said, “I think I’m going to like you, Jasmine. You have a something about you. A something real special. I’ll just bet you’ve acted, haven’t you?” The idea amused her, but she merely smiled and accepted Lara’s hug. The interview was over.
Then Bill opened a bottle of Soave and told stories about camping in northern Michigan. He’d been raised there. Jasmine didn’t see the point in sleeping in tents; the woods sounded cold and wild and creepy. But she said, “Is exactly what I want to try out come summer, man. Campin and huntin.”
Lara asked about Port-of-Spain. There was nothing to tell about her hometown that wouldn’t shame her in front of nice white American folk like the Moffitts. The place was shabby, the people were grasping and cheating and lying and life was full of despair and drink and wanting. But by the time she finished, the island sounded romantic. Lara said, “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if you were a writer, Jasmine.”
Ann Arbor was a huge small town. She couldn’t imagine any kind of school the size of the University of Michigan. She meant to sign up for courses in the spring. Bill brought home a catalogue bigger than the phonebook for all of Trinidad. The university had courses in everything. It would be hard to choose; she’d have to get help from Bill. He wasn’t like a professor, not the ones back home where even high school teachers called themselves professors and acted like little potentates. He wore blue jeans and thick sweaters with holes in the elbows and used phrases like “in vitro” as he watched her curry up fish. Dr. Parveen back home—he called himself “doctor” when everybody knew he didn’t have even a Master’s degree—was never seen without his cotton jacket which had gotten really ratty at the cuffs and lapel edges. She hadn’t learned anything in the two years she’d put into college. She’d learned more from working in the bank for two months than she had at college. It was the assistant manager, Personal Loans Department, Mr. Singh, who had turned her on to the Daboos and to smooth, bargain-priced emigration.
Jasmine liked Lara. Lara was easygoing. She didn’t spend the time she had between rehearsals telling Jasmine how to cook and clean American-style. Mrs. Daboo did that in 16B. Mrs. Daboo would barge in with a plate of stale samosas and snoop around giving free advice on how mainstream Americans did things. As if she were dumb or something! As if she couldn’t keep her own eyes open and make her mind up for herself. Sunday mornings she had to share the butcher-block workspace in the kitchen with Bill. He made the Sunday brunch from new recipes in Gourmet and Cuisine. Jasmine hadn’t seen a man cook who didn’t have to or wasn’t getting paid to do it. Things were topsy-turvy in the Moffitt house. Lara went on two- and three-day road trips and Bill stayed home. But even her daddy, who’d never poured himself a cup of tea, wouldn’t put Bill down as a woman. The mornings Bill tried out something complicated, a Cajun shrimp, sausage, and beans dish, for instance, Jasmine skipped church services. The Moffitts didn’t go to church, though they seemed to be good Christians. They just didn’t talk church talk, which suited her fine.
Two months passed. Jasmine knew she was lucky to have found a small, clean, friendly family like the Moffitts to build her new life around. “Man!” she’d exclaim as she vacuumed the wide-plank wood floors or ironed (Lara wore pure silk or pure cotton). “In this country Jesus givin out good luck only!” By this time they knew she wasn’t a student, but they didn’t care and said they wouldn’t report her. They never asked if she was illegal on top of it.
To savor her new sense of being a happy, lucky person, she would put herself through a series of “what ifs”: what if Mr. Singh in Port-of-Spain hadn’t turned her on to the Daboos and loaned her two thousand! What if she’d been ugly like the Mintoo girl and the manager hadn’t even offered! What if the customs man had unlocked the door of the van! Her Daddy liked to say, “You is a helluva girl, Jasmine.”
“Thank you, Jesus,” Jasmine said, as she carried on.
Christmas Day the Moffitts treated her just like family. They gave her a red cashmere sweater with a V neck so deep it made her blush. If Lara had worn it, her bosom wouldn’t hang out like melons. For the holiday weekend Bill drove her to the Daboos in Detroit. “You work too hard,” Bill said to her. “Learn to be more selfish. Come on, throw your weight around.” She’d rather not have spent time with the Daboos, but that first afternoon of the interview she’d told Bill and Lara that Mr. Daboo was her mother’s first cousin. She had thought it shameful in those days to have no papers, no family, no roots. Now Loretta and Viola in tight, bright pants seemed trashy like girls at Two-Johnny Bissoondath’s Bar back home. She was stuck with the story of the Daboos being family. Village bumpkins, ha! She would break out. Soon.
Jasmine had Bill drop her off at the RenCen. The Plantations Motel, in fact, the whole Riverfront area, was too seamy. She’d managed to cut herself off mentally from anything too islandy. She loved her daddy and mummy, but she didn’t think of them that often anymore. Mummy had expected her to be homesick and come flying right back home. “Is blowin sweat-of-brow money is what you doin, Pa,” Mummy had scolded. She loved them, but she’d become her own person. That was something that Lara said: “I am my own person.”
The Daboos acted thrilled to see her back. “What you drinkin, Jasmine girl?” Mr. Daboo kept asking. “You drinkin sherry or what?” Pouring her little glasses of sherry instead of rum was a sure sign he thought she had become whitefolkfancy. The Daboo sisters were very friendly, but Jasmine considered them too wild. Both Loretta and Viola had changed boyfriends. Both were seeing black men they’d danced with in Ann Arbor. Each night at bedtime, Mr. Daboo cried. “In Trinidad we stayin we side, they stayin they side. Here, everything mixed up. Is helluva confusion, no?”
On New Year’s Eve the Daboo girls and their black friends went to a dance. Mr. and Mrs. Daboo and Jasmine watched TV for a while. Then Mr. Daboo got out a brooch from his pocket and pinned it on Jasmine’s red sweater. It was a Christmasy brooch, a miniature sleigh loaded down with snowed-on mistletoe. Before she could pull away, he kissed her on the lips. “Good luck for the New Year!” he said. She lifted her head and saw tears. “Is year for dreams comin true.”
Jasmine started to cry, too. There was nothing wrong, but Mr. Daboo, Mrs. Daboo, she, everybody was crying.
What for? This is where she wanted to be. She’d spent some damned uncomfortable times with the assistant manager to get approval for her loan. She thought of Daddy. He would be playing poker and fanning himself with a magazine. Her married sisters would be rolling out the dough for stacks and stacks of roti, and Mummy would be steamed purple from stirring the big pot of goat curry on the stove. She missed them. But. It felt strange to think of anyone celebrating New Year’s Eve in summery clothes.
In March Lara and her performing group went on the road. Jasmine knew that the group didn’t work from scripts. The group didn’t use a stage, either; instead, it took over supermarkets, senior citizens’ centers, and
school halls, without notice. Jasmine didn’t understand the performance world. But she was glad that Lara said, “I’m not going to lay a guilt trip on myself. Muffie’s in super hands,” before she left.
Muffle didn’t need much looking after. She played Trivial Pursuit all day, usually pretending to be two persons, sometimes Jasmine, whose accent she could imitate. Since Jasmine didn’t know any of the answers, she couldn’t help. Muffle was a quiet, precocious child with see-through blue eyes like her dad’s, and red braids. In the early evenings Jasmine cooked supper, something special she hadn’t forgotten from her island days. After supper she and Muffle watched some TV, and Bill read. When Muffle went to bed, Bill and she sat together for a bit with their glasses of Soave. Bill, Muffle, and she were a family, almost.
Down in her basement room that late, dark winter, she had trouble sleeping. She wanted to stay awake and think of Bill. Even when she fell asleep it didn’t feel like sleep because Bill came barging into her dreams in his funny, loose-jointed, clumsy way. It was mad to think of him all the time, and stupid and sinful; but she couldn’t help it. Whenever she put back a book he’d taken off the shelf to read or whenever she put his clothes through the washer and dryer, she felt sick in a giddy, wonderful way. When Lara came back things would get back to normal. Meantime she wanted the performance group miles away.
Lara called in at least twice a week. She said things like, “We’ve finally obliterated the margin between realspace and performancespace.” Jasmine filled her in on Muffie’s doings and the mail. Bill always closed with, “I love you. We miss you, hon.”
One night after Lara had called—she was in Lincoln, Nebraska—Bill said to Jasmine, “Let’s dance.”
She hadn’t danced since the reggae night she’d had too many rum punches. Her toes began to throb and clench. She untied her apron and the fraying, knotted-up laces of her running shoes.
The Middleman and Other Stories Page 12
