by Richie Drenz
“Is you nyam out the rass cream enuh. Playing like you innocent. YOU! You same one nyam it out.” Pinky patted her bosom slowly, one time, while dragging out her reply,
“Miiii? ... Mi? Poor mi ... Lightning strike mi right here so, mi don’t touch a thing darling dear. Check again.” She turned her back and walked off leave mi fuming, rolling her ass to her bed,
“Is you! Who else would’ve dig, dig-up the ice-cream so? Eeeh?” The culprit sucked her teeth disregarding my accusation. It didn’t seem to get to her one bit. It was then I realised maybe it really wasn’t she. Who then? Mommy? Pinky didn’t reach her bed yet,
“Hsst. Listen to mi nuh little boy, don’t draw mi tongue, you hear mi. Is that you really come bother mi peace ’bout? Before you go bathe.” She reached her bed and before sitting said, “So what you gone do if is mi eat it? Beat mi? ... Is that you come in here to do? See mi here. Come beat.” She touched into her chest showing me where she is then began bending to sit on the bed. “Who you suppose to fight you not fighting. Why you never stab up Beanie when you take out the kitchen knife and go look for him? Is mi you have strength for?” She sat beside a small pile of colourful clothes cluttered on the bed, dragged a batty-rider jeans shorts from under her legs that squeezed her under her thigh. She winced, and wrinkled her face like a raisin while dragging it out, tossed it close to the messy pile. I glared, pressed my fingers in my palm, sunk them pretending I was squeezing Pinky’s neck for eating out the youths’ ice-cream. My fingers felt a bit stiff from the mud beginning to dry and harden around them. Her face got lighter and boastfully bragged,
“Ice cream can't hold mi, that little toops of ice-cream would’ve just drop one-side in one well in mi belly.” She began to turn her head of false hair towards me. “If mi did ever walk through your cream lastnight you would’ve stay anywhere you at and feel it, ’cause is the whole box of cream mi would’ve brush off clean and lick out the plastic bag.” She looked right in my eyes and blinked once and the whole demeanour on her face changed to a jovial one. “You can stay there, is a empty box you would’ve come see lock up back well neat in the fridge like it don’t touch yet.” She spanned the wiry smirk on her face. “You must thank God mi never go in the freezer, hsst ...you lucky yaah.” I was just standing at her open door, glaring at her in disgust, she fanned me off and said, “Go bathe your skin and move from mi door with your dirty hands them...” The pupil of her eyes went to the brown mud spots on her white door, mi never want she spot them enuh. “Look how you dirty up mi door ... You going to shine it off back with piece of wet cloth, you know that.”
I didn’t move. She continued to run me from infront her doorway,
“Think is school this that you always don't want go. Is your sister wedding. Go bathe and make sure you wash out your arm pit them good.” I still didn’t move. She longed out her neck towards me and asked “Is what? Stop act like a mawma-man and a murmur-murmur over the little drop of cream and ...” Then her voice deepened into a base tone, lips visibly pronounced every word, eyebrows went to the top of her forehead as she bawled out "GO BATHEEE!”
“You talking like is mi never want go school.”
“Stop take me for bighead bird, mi head might big yes but mi not fool-fool, mi know is plenty time you use your heart make excuse to don't go no school.”
Pinky turned her back to me. I slowly released the squeeze of my hands, a flake of mud crust fell from my hand to Pinky’s burgundy carpet, I simmered my words in a gravy of thoughts before parting my teeth,
“Maybe ... Its ...” I added more thought, “Maybe I was depressed. Depression. Sometimes mi heart, mi mean, like inside is just ... I can’t describe it. But I know when I wake up to my heart’s beating and it feels like a bad thing...” I looked to the fluffy carpet and the brown flakes of mud that fell there, “Mi not happy. I don’t want to hear my heart beating.” I quietly bent and picked the flake of mud from the carpet, held it in my muddy hand, gazed at it. “Well maybe scared, maybe mi scared, you know.”
“Scared of what?”
“Dying.”
Pinky turned to face me, the scent of her room was clearer now; it was a chemical, the raw acidic scent of her yellow bleaching cream. She rubbed up with it every morning as she wake up. My body lost its anger and so too, lost its liveliness. The same feeling began to wrap me that I had most mornings, the mornings when I told Mom I didn’t want to go to school. The feeling to be alive but dead. Inside had no life. Inside has an overgrown red hearse. I hated to feel it pumping blood.
I wanted to block out all I had heard. I hated that Dr. Reid played God, telling me when I would die. How much longer mi have to live. Mi wish mi never know anything, let mi live without this worry ’bout dying haunting me, menacing me and killing me before I go. I wake up every morning thinking of it. And with all the expensive drugs I took, I was getting worse and worse and worse. What Dr. Reid predicted as age thirty-six was now age twenty one, months away, six months away, just in time for Merry Christmas. I wished Christmas never comes, but everyday it’ was racing closer, the distance of my death getting shorter, driving up closer to me, getting bigger and realer as the distance shortened and came up closer to me, it’s bigger in my vision of reality and I could see its face pulling closer as the days went by, it’s ugly. It’s scary. It’s death.
Leelia getting forty thousand U.S. out of Qwan in itself was a next issue. Even though mi don’t really agree to Mom sending Leelia at fourteen and courting Lee over the years into seducing a big old twenty-one year old Qwan. The truth was, if she never do it, mi would’ve been dead from three years ago. Qwan was twenty-three and Leelia, the unconsented age of seventeen, when he yielded to Leelia’s being a little temptress with grown seductions. Mr. Micheal Douglas’ interference hindered it from happening much sooner. He didn’t want his son to be with Leelia from the vibes I saw him giving off. Maybe he hated Leelia or something.
My sister was underage when Qwan had sex with her. I hated him with all my heart for that. Later that year, he gave Leelia two thousand dollars to buy a year’s worth of the medication I needed to live, and the year after that four thousand. I wanted to bow and kiss Qwan’s feet for that.
Qwan had been giving Leelia the money for my medication for three years now. The last amount was four thousand but now I needed ten times that, forty thousand and I knew that wasn’t the easiest thing for Leelia to do, plus I knew the reason why he wouldn’t. I didn't even really want him to do it, if it wasn’t for her. For her. So now I prayed to God that he did. For her.
For the feeling I had, depressed was the wrong word I used before. Scared was wrong too. Hopeless and helpless nailed it closer to home. Hopeless. And helpless. That’s what you become. That was how I felt.
There was this dark hollowness I felt, laying all alone in bed, in the quietest times of dawn, listening to the haunting beats of my heart. I would wake up to a death drum beating, the reminder of my death. To fight this feeling of helplessness, I helped all I could with my hours. It’s the only medication that truly helped, me helping others. It made me feel helpful instead of helpless, purposeful instead of no purpose, worthwhile on this earth instead of worthless. And that’s all I desired, all that mattered, not fucking one million beautiful women, no expensive food, no driving around in fast and expensive cars. I just wanted to help others. That’s all I wanted. That sedated me.
And I didn't want anybody being sorry for me. I was not a pity case. Everyone has to die someday. I didn’t need to burden anyone with mine. I didn’t want Qwan’s money to feel like a parasite pesting him and his father’s bank account. But if I should open my heart and speak, I did need his money, not for me, but because staying alive was being there to father my child, the person that will need me the most, needed my support, needed a father, needed me to be alive and be here, my baby, not Mom, nor any family, my baby. I wanted to stand by my baby in the hardest times, I want to take my child to school. I didn’t want to die, I was scared, not for me, f
or my child.
My shoulders slouched low. I lumbered over to Pinky’s bed, my mind still in thought, sat beside her on her floral sheet, some of it dragged off the bed, the slanted end hung untidily, swaying slightly back and forth right above the furry fluff of the carpet.
“You not going to dead, stop talking like Dr. Reid is God. Him can blow breath and shine sun? Him can make big stone? Him can make mango tree? Him don’t know when you or nobody gone dead, him trying to do God’s work,” I wanted to believe what Pinky said, I thought the same thing, but Dr. Reid studied medicine and heart for years. Pinky studied weed. And if we talking about God, Pinky didn’t go to church in God’s know how long. And the only Bible she owned was the one Mom bought from her booklist in grade seven. Mi doubt Pinky know it’s Genesis start the bible not Psalms. But Pinky never stopped. She went on to knowledgeably preach about the Bible and Christianity, “Anything God planned for you, that’s what going to happen. God won’t let you die. You a good youth. You is a bigger virgin than Mary. Just trust in father God.”
Looking in outer-space, eyes too focused to blink, I replied,
“Is not miself mi worrying ’bout.” Pinky went ahead of me and wrongly assumed it was Mom I was worried about.
“Aubrea live her life already, stop worry ’bout the old foot.”
I stretched my hand to turn on the fan, but my hands were depressingly muddy, somehow to me it looked like doctors placed my hands in casts made from mud. My hand fell back to my side without an ounce of life in it, and from my very low tone you could tell my mind was still far away as I replied,
“Not Aubrea .... My baby.”
“What?” Pinky clapped her hands together and bowed forward “Watch here now! You have woman?”
My eyes swung up at Pinky. My mind morphed back to earth, and I crash-landed back into reality. I said too much. I should cover this up. But ... You could hear my deep exhale through my nose, I answered without any urgency,
“Yeah.”
“How mi never see you with her yet? What she name? Which part she live? Talk the things.”
“Just chill nuh.” I realised she took my baby to mean a girlfriend I had and not my child. I wiggled my ass on the mattress to find a more comfortable sit on the bed. “Don’t worry ’bout that,” You could hear my puffy exhale again and almost see the puff of wind that jetted through my nose. “Mi just feel it for her and mi feel it for —-“
Pinky broke off a piece of my sentence when she gently wrapped my muddy wrist with her clean hands. I stopped talking, looked down at her hand holding mine. Her fingers firmed into the underside of my wrist as she got ready to say what she was thinking,
“Mi can imagine how bad that feel bro. Jah know. All she must have it hard when you tell her that things gone to less than a year.”
My mind was dazing off back into thoughts, outer-space.
“Mi don't tell her yet.”
“Jeesam!” her hand jerked and fingers clamped tighter into my wrist, “So she don't know yet? ... You must tell her man. Is what? You ’fraid?” She had sincerity in her voice, mix-up and vulgarity was absent from her soft tone, just a kind concern as she advised, “Oh God! You must tell her. Mi would prefer to know if mi was your girlfriend.” Her hand tugged mine closer to hers, “Big man thing Vance, tell her.”
I lifted her hand off mine.
“You nastying up your hand.” She grabbed on back to my wrist, and with her feisty attitude her words pounced out her quiet demeanour at me,
“Water take off mud!” Her voice descended back or more like transcended to being angelic soft, she leaned her head down and to me, trying to look into the eyes of my bowed head,
“You gone tell her right?” Her index finger hooked under my chin and pulled it up into her stare, “Vance. Tell her ... She deserve to know if you care about the girl.”
“Mi don’t want it burden her down especially with the baby.”
“Which baby?” Her hands flew off mine, tilted her entire body away from me, her eyelids crumpled.
Inside me felt different, more than panicky, there was an inner body effect happening in me. It wasn’t good. My heart was racing, needles sticking, twitches in my heart, my heart tightening and every thud my heart made jerked my chest outside my body. Heart Attack. Stiffness. Heart wringing on needles. Heart slowly failing. Fighting. My muddy hand grabbed my brown naked chest, wishing I could shove my hand through my chest and squeeze my heart to stop the ache, squeeze it to stop the stabs, the twitches. I utter a soft,
“Uh.” The beat slowed down,
‘Bo-dum ... Bo-dum.’
‘Bo-dum.’
I glanced up at Pinky, the skin of my face contorted in a twist of agony. Her hand dashed around my shoulder, she pulled me closer, her hands were not steady, shaking, trembling.
“Vance is what? You alright?” My heart was returning to normal heartbeats,
‘Bo-dum, bo-dum, bo-dum.’
I swallowed, looked up, spoke cheerily,
“Yeah man, mi good, is not nothing.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah man. Mi gone bathe and go get ready now.”
Mi get up from the bed and walked to the door. This strange, the mud splashes on the door looked a lot more now than when I was standing there. The scent of the yellow-green bleaching cream was always in the room but now its returning to my consciousness. My heart still a little tight and sticking, sticking, sticking me. Pins. Needles. Chest pain. I was use to the feeling. Hated it.
“Vance you can breed nobody though?” I stopped walking; my belly squirmed. I remembered all I ate since morning was the Julie mango and June plum Ms. Merl gave me. The Julie mango was so sweet, mi eat the seed till it turn white, white, white before mi throw it away. I still hadn’t ate my breakfast yet,
“She pregnant?” My hearted jumped. Pinky’s question was adding more tension to the tight strings in my heart. I increased the pace of my walk to the door, answering Pinky with nothing but silence.
“Vance! Little boy, answer mi nuh. She pregnant?”
I kept walking, my head spinning like a CD on repeat, dizzy. I replied,
“Mi gone get ready. Mi late.” I exited through the door, closed her mud-splashed door and turned down the long baby blue corridor, no shirt and muddy hands. I heard Pinky’s shout,
“Is pregnant she pregnant Vance? ... Who you breed?”
CHAPTER 14
I’m Building a Mansion On Quicksand
by: Leelia Lexings
The sky was a wide sea of blue, sprinkled with swirling strips of white cotton candy. The wooden door to enter the church must have been made that big to let through a Mack truck. Both sides of the door were wide open welcomingly, letting in the bright afternoon light. The gigantic windows were letting in square packages of sunlight into the church. I have this beautiful, clean, serene feeling when I am in a church. And today I felt like a filthy gutter.
The wooden cross above the window reminded me that God is here with me, I could feel his presence in the cool breeze blowing. The wind seeped through the huge willow tree outside with a hollow ‘wooooeee’ sound into the church.
The front row of chairs was seated with close friends and family all smiling and antsy with anticipation. The anxiety in the church was weird, it’s not like the regular ones at most weddings where the guests were happy anticipating a joyous matrimonial union. It was more a type of wonder, wondering if this marriage would go through or not. Would he say yes? Would I say no? Qwan had long decided, and I was on the border of yes. No. Yes. No. My mind in total anarchy.
Our neighbour, Ms. Merl, arrived late. She was a little bit wobbly coming through the second side door. She tried not to disrupt the wedding, walking with quiet, apologetic steps against the white walls and long rows of chairs. She found her way into the third row upfront, wrapping her orange, wide-skirted dress around her legs as she slipped down by seated guests to midway the row, right behind Munchy and Vance. The stocky pastor’s shiny cheeks su
nk into a dimple, deep enough to catch a paint pan of water from when he greeted Ms. Merl with a smile. He dipped his head with a small bow approvingly at Ms. Merl taking her seat. I looked above his low-cut gray hair to the brown wooden clock on the wall, studied the time. I felt my stomach twisted instantly. Only minutes away. I felt the sharp blade of a knife twisting both directions in my stomach.
Pastor Ellis looked through his gold frame glasses reading from Corinthians fourteen in his black Bible. My mind’s in strides. I wanted to grab my belly bottom, suck my finger. I fidgeted with my fingers and looked over at Vance. My heart was collapsing.
Pastor Ellis stood so close by me and Qwan on the wooden step that led to the empty pulpit, that as he read, I smelt his hot breath. It wasn’t a bad odour, but I could smell that he had ackee and salt-fish for breakfast or someone’s saltfish for his breakfast.
Wow. Qwan was just gorgeous, cladded in his full white Armani suit and powder pink tie. His taste in fashion had never been slighted, always on point. Except for today. Not that I am picky or anything, but I wished his pants were two inch closer to the ground, and I had said it to him when he tried on the suit, but I remembered his baritone voice saying with much chirp to it,
