by Richie Drenz
I pressed, ‘OK’ to open her inbox messages. So said, so done. The third message on top, that was staring me in the face, was from my man. The second message on top was from my man. The last message on top, him too. Kiss mi clitoris! What they could be texting one another so in the early morning. I wasn’t laughing ’bout the situation. I was fuming, not over Finaral but over my mother’s betraying me. Mi dying to find out what the messages say, because mi sure is must some snake-into-grass, schmoozing thing them up to. Mi select ‘Open’ on the last message.
CHAPTER 29
Pack Your Belongings
by: David Lexings
That night, my eyes were fixed on the black scandal-bag on the floor at the side of our pop-down cupboard. The scandal bag was being used as our garbage bag. Mi see a small frisky rumbling of the bag, heard the crisp dry sound of scavenging rats as they scuttled and rummaged through spoilts and scrags of garbage. A roach scurried to the edge of the cupboard, then another crawled to the edge behind the first roach. Then there was a third roach. A small teenage one. My blood crawled internally. I frigging hate roaches. My kitchen.
The biggest cockroach of the three was at the front with its long feelers probing for crumbs of food, it widened its wings in flight mode, and the hair on my skin turned yellow, thinking about him flying about and pitching on me. Or even just his wings batting against my face. I even hated the dry buzzing sound that their wings made flying through the air. These small insects horrify me. I wanted to do what all humans want to do when they are scared of anything, any insect, any unknown. I wanted to destroy it. Kill this roach before it took flight.
To my eyes, I could almost see through their mahogany brown wings. It looked like more than one pair intertwining with each other. My skin crawled. It didn’t fly but just anticipating it pitching on my hand, or neck, or face with its sharp nasty legs is the most blood curdling feeling. I hated roaches. What had my life gone to? Eighteen and things were getting worse and worse and hell-bottom. Ever since Micheal Douglas started his landscaping company and his workers using lawn-mowers, which I couldn’t afford to buy, me and my little cutlass got less and lesser lawns to service. The brute drove me straight out of business. Back then he was the big cheese and he still was ontop. I used to get at least twenty jobs per week, now it was more like three per week maximum or so. Aubrea’s ranting voice nagged me in the background,
“Mi not use to this!”
The leptospirosis rat dashed out the scandal bag at the speed of a snake’s bite. Another one followed, a bit slower, fatter, longer, bigger, more disgusting. The stench from the sour garbage was trapped inside by the closed windows and doors of the kitchen, rottening the inside tunnel of my nose. I knew Aubrea had a nose-hole too and that she smelt it, and she knew the stinking garbage should have been taken outside. But as usual, there it remained until I came off the road in the evenings and took it out. Her voice sounded even more annoying as I thought about what she did all day - nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even the dishes. Her voice was driving me up the frigging wall in the background. Please shut up. I was in no haste to take a breath in my smelly kitchen. My life.
I bought myself nothing. Every dollar I earned I spent into the house. Made sure Aubrea and Pinky were taken care of. Aubrea’s savings was similar to what she did in the house - nothing. She wanted to keep on living the life she was grown up in, which we couldn’t afford. And now that I wasn’t getting any jobs, she had transformed into someone new. A lazy spoilt bitch who cursed everyday about what she didn’t have. About what she wanted to have. What she should have. She had transformed into someone I never fell in love with. To be quite honest, if years ago someone had said to me,
“You know when life gets tough Aubrea gonna be your biggest adversary, she won’t stand by you but against you.”
I would look at them without smiling and say something sarcastic, like,
“And you know that before I die a black man will be the president of America.” Or maybe something more off like “A woman will be the Prime Minister of Jamaica before I die.”
Just say the impossible because I couldn’t believe how much without money Aubrea changed. She hadn’t lost feeling for me, it was just that her love had changed to something else, something cold. Maybe ice. Or maybe hate.
The roach’s sharp prickly legs began to crawl back into the crease of the old piece of cupboard. Mi eyes search the floor like mad for a slippers or shoes, anything to clobber the roach before it escaped. None in sight. I slithered closer, eyes fixed on this roach. I wanted to smash this roach, kill it, kill it. I doubled my fist, scan the floor again, squeezed my fist. I stood still, watching the two smaller roaches escaping, crawling into the board wall above the cupboard. Aubrea’s voice continued to bicker from in her room.
“When you gone get money to buy gas and put in the house? Look how long the stove don't turn on!”
Aubrea damn well and know I wanted a better life too, yet she emptied all her blame on me, cutting me deep with her tongue, over and over again,
“You too worthless. You damn cruff! Mi know is this here kind of life you want live longtime.”
Aubrea knew my buttons and she was pushing them well. I gave Aubrea the solution to solve our position, but no, she refused to do it, I yelled it,
“Aubrea sell the car!” It wasn’t the first time mi telling her to sell her car. “Sell your car and make we buy little gas put in the kitchen!”
It made sense to me. It was better that we sold the car and bought food for the fridge. Food for the baby. And buy mi one of those lawn-mowers so mi could get more work. It would make mi work faster and I could pay her back for the machine. But Aubrea’s head was manufactured out of the same steel that made lawn-mowers. With all my talking to her, trying to show her the light, she wouldn’t take heed. She wouldn’t sell the car, not because it was her father who had given it to her, as what she continued to use for her excuse to not sell it, but because Aubrea looked richer in the car than she looked in walk-foot. Better yet, she looked better off than people, that was the bottom-line. She wanted to impress everybody in the community to believe that she was better off than them. We had the only car in the community and she wasn’t giving up that hype. Although she never said this outright but to me, Aubrea rather to look and make people think she was in a better position than them, rather than to have a bottle of syrup in the cupboard, some yam and potato in the old fridge, on our plate, on our scrape-up table and in our hungry bellies. Her reasoning was never too logical to me. Her damn voice sounded like fingernails making that squeeing annoying sound on clean glass, it got louder, sickening, I couldn’t fucking stand it no more and like a lighted match thrown in a full gas cylinder, she exploded in utmost rage,
“Mi sick and tired of you! Why you don’t leave? Eeh? LEAVE! Just fucking leave the house an go on! LEEAAVE!”
One swift grab. I snatched the fat brown cockroach, squeezed. Squeezed it in my fist till the feeling of its stabbing sharp pricks on its legs scrawling against my palm to escape was gone. Its wings crushed. Its feelers stopped twitching and scrambling against my thumb, just stopped moving. It’s feelers touching my thumb felt light, yet so sharp and stiff as if they were two thin brown bones growing out of its head. I needed to leave this house, now. Now. Before I explode. I needed a drink. Vodka. Aubrea’s door slammed and her footstep clummed louder and louder as she blazed to the kitchen. The little devil woman lighting her tongue on fire, her antagonising voice pelting out at me,
“Answer mi nuh worthless boy!”
I gritted my teeth. Squeezed my fist tighter. The dry crushy sound was louder than the wet squishy sound as I squeezed and burst the disgusting roach’s bottom with a splashing ‘pop-pluck’ sound. The semi-solid cream from the roach’s soft ass spewing into my hand felt not wet, put icky-sticky, a nasty type of clammy feeling as it stuck unto my hand. It wasn’t warm, the white mush felt almost cold. Some of it dropped to the floor. The devil-ridden woman marched into the kitche
n, shoved me on the shoulder. I turned around. She spat at my left eye. Her spit landed on my cheek. This was more than nag. Her words sliced me like a sword. Her spit got me violent. She cursed,
“Mi don’t want you in mi house! Come out! Loser! Fucking worthless!”
I rather to be chewing on tin foil paper than to hear her words. I was silent. But I squeezed. Muscled my hand. Squeezed. Squeezed. Squeezed the last of the white marshy shit, squirting it out in my hand. Squeezed. I couldn’t stand it. I wiped some of her spit off my cheek with my clean hand. I needed a change. I released my fist, filled my lungs with air, let it out. Crumbs and white fell to the red floor. A piece of its wing, feet and head still stuck in my palm. The perfect condition to shot Aubrea a box that people in Hong Kong could hear. Aubrea cursed,
“Come out!” Shoved me again, in my chest, “Come out!” My anger built. Shoved me again. I open my hand. “COME OUT NOW!”
I chanted inside my head,’ Don't let the tail wag the dog. Don't let the tail wag the dog. Don't let the tail wag the dog.’
I looked at the scandal bag of garbage on the floor, then looked at her, not seeing her eyes in the dark kitchen but penetrating them as I asked,
“You want mi to leave?”
“Mi regret the day mi never listen to Daddy!” As she screamed those ruthless cruel big stones into my feelings, I folded back my hand into a hard fist. Her mouth would be the perfect target. Don't let the tail wag the dog. Don't let the tail wag the dog. “Don’t know why mi ever did go married a poor man! Is the worst thing ever happen to mi in my life!”
“Mi trying every bloodseed thing! What else you want mi to do? Eeh? Turn water into Hennessy? Eeh? WHAT ELSE?”
I stomped out the kitchen into the livingroom. Walked away. Best thing to do. She followed. Raging.
My brain wasn’t the size of a football, maybe a hollow ping-pong ball, but even I could figure out why Aubrea was truly sick to her stomach of me. All her life she was used to having more than she needed, excess. Luxury. Without having to lift a straw. Now she had less than she needed to survive. Poverty.
Her parents had warned her over and over again.
“Lee, if you choose to be with that poor ghetto guy you choosing not to be a part of the family. And we’re serious about this. We can’t afford to ruin the family’s reputation by choosing to stoop so low and mingle with that kind. The Lexings are beneath us. Moreover, for you to have a baby with that trash. We will pay for your abortion. Leave him.”
Aubrea didn’t choose to not be with her parents. At sixteen, she was choosing love. She was choosing to carry her child. Drop out of school and fight the storm with me, her teenage love. But now the storm was a mercilessly freezing blizzard. Her reality was cold. It was poor. It was frightening. She wanted to undo everything. Wished she didn’t have Pinky. Wanted to go back home to Daddy, to luxury. And she could. If this were a game, but it wasn’t. It was reality. It was her life. She had never seen hungry days before. Never had a belly full up of gas. Never seen toilet paperless days. It was a cruel awakening that proved smiles were scarce with poverty, frowns were plenty and anger was high and peaking. Poverty was hell. And for the poor, money became your only saviour to living like humans. Money became God for many. Steal, kill, prostitution for salvation, for money.
Aubrea didn’t believe in love any more. She believed in money. How far would she go for money? I didn't know. It depended on what heavens her new God offered her in return. Cheat maybe. Lie maybe. Give up her child maybe. Save a child maybe. Kill?
The fury was getting redder and redder in Aubrea. Her voice rang out in a condescending tone, loud enough so the neighbours could hear clearly without cocking their ears at the fence.
“You call yourself a man? ... And you can’t take care of your child. Mi should’ve had an abortion! I would have been much better off.” She shoved me from behind. I felt it through my back all the way through to my chest. “ You can’t take care of mi!”
“Why you stay with mi then? Mi tie you down?”
“Young mi young and fool! Mommy was right, never talk to a poor man!”
I snapped around in one spin, facing her, eye to eye,
“Leave then nuh!” The scent from the kitchen was high and as strong as the scent of gasoline at the gas station but if this scent was gasoline it was the stinking-est one. The scent travelled into the living room. The moon was in the sky but in the living room felt like the parching sun was in the kitchen. My neck began to sweat. I felt hot and clustered and stink.
“You leave! This is MY house. You don't own dry shit in here. Leave. Leave. JUST LEAVE AND GO ON!” I believe the entire neighbourhood heard her loud and clear, but it still didn’t register in my ping-pong brain. It was easier for me to swallow her whole than for me to swallow the news. I had nowhere to go.
“You want mi to leave? Want mi to leave?” Fire blazed out my eyes into hers. But my flame was a baby pup to her roaring lion. She was always better at getting angrier than me, even if she was in the wrong.
“Yes! ...Now!... Leave now. Come out of mi house! Get out of my life!”
Pinky burst through the blue curtain that was hung at the door entrance to the livingroom, running towards me and collided her underfed body with my leg. She feebly hugged around one of my legs.
“Mi not leaving mi daughter.” I placed a hand on Pinky’s head, covering one of her big plaits in her head. She stretched up her two anorexic arms. They looked like two flimsy shoes string attached to her shoulders for arms, wanting me to lift her up. Mi wipe the crushed roach out my hand on the batty of my shorts, all over the back-pocket. Mi use the back of my hand to wipe the rest of Aubrea’s spit out of my face.
“Daddy ... Daddy” Pinky’s voice was whimpering. I stepped away from her.
“Pinky, go sit down.” I said to her, I was busy cursing and still angry.
“Mi hate every single bone that make you up old cruff! My life was perfect before mi meet you. You destroy mi life! Mi have nothing now. Nothing, but that damn red child that looks so much like you that it hurts.” I looked down at my baby Pinky “Mi sick and tired of you talking ’bout you trying, you trying. When you getting nothing done? We starving.”
“You starving little liar gal?”
“Yes mi starving. When last you buy piece of mutton? Look on Micheal Douglas them. Look at Daddy. When you gonna be a real man and stand up to your responsibility like them?”
“The same year you stand up to yours. You don’t have no responsibility too, eeh? It’s me one?”
Mi don't know what was wrong with my lulu wife, but I was always standing up to my responsibility, she made it seem as if mi didn't do nothing since we were together. With the little mi made, mi take care of her the best way mi could afford to, she and my little girl, Pinky. Mi just never have nothing and couldn’t afford nothing right now. Mi think she was confusing responsible with rich, with money, excess, luxury. She always had a lustful eye for Douglas’ things.
“Go sleep with Micheal Douglas then since you love call up him name ... and you love him things Ms. Pretty-car-and-big-house-eye. Is rich man you want? Go lay down with him then nuh.” And I forcefully added, “Make his coolie woman chop you up into eight separate pieces like Dominoes pizza. Since is that you want.” Pinky tottered over to Aubrea.
“Yes. Is that mi want. Mi wouldn’t be suffering like dog now.”
Pinky began to cry with a sour face.
“Little gal, shut up your mouth!” Aubrea screamed at my baby and pushed her away. “You and your Poopa is the same damn thing.” Pinky ran back to me. “Mi could just stab you right in your face right now for what you putting mi through. GET OUT!”
Aubrea was offered a heaven. It was to let me leave with her only child, our child, so she could get her freedom, pursue money. Her decision was already made. Her happiness. She was already taking out a lot of her bottled up bitterness on Pinky. She had grown to hate me so much that the very sight of Pinky irritated her because Pinky wa
s the splitting image of me. When Aubrea looked at Pinky, she didn’t see her child, all she saw was me. What mattered more was that if she didn’t have Pinky with me she could have been up and gone her ways already. Wouldn’t have to be in this situation now, living a life of sufferation. She wished she didn’t have Pinky. Wished she had listen to her parents and did the abortion. Pinky was the crosses that helped tie her down in this. Pinky was the best thing to ever had happened to me.
“Let mi ask you this Aubrea. What you doing to help? You don't even want to wash out the baby clothes. No matter how the garbage stink, all if it’s stinking up the whole house, and you here whole day, you rather dead first before you just take it out!” Pinky clung on to my leg and her mal-nourished hand tugged at my shorts, “One hand can’t clap. Help out nuh. Everyday you get up with the same bloodfire thing. Look how much work you turn down. You —-“
“You breed mi and drop mi out of school, how mi to get a decent job and mi never finish school idiot? As the man, you suppose to take care of mi. That’s what a real man does.”
“Nothing not wrong with the jobs. At least you could buy gas now. Don't? Any work is work , you have too much pride?”
“That’s all mi have left after you turn mi into a pauper.” She started crying as she talked. “Mi wish God would just take mi life sometime than to live here so with you, God know. Mi fed up, mi fed up, mi fed up.”
Pinky was crying louder, her face turning red and her whole face wet.
“Daaddy ... Daaddy.” She buried her head in the back of my shorts. I remembered I wiped my roach splattered hand there, I grabbed her, pulled her around, her forehead plastered with crushed roach. I stooped, wiped and picked it off. Stand. Her puny shoe-string arms stretching up, I lifted her and she was so light; filled with more air than food, like a bag of O’lay’s potato chips is filled with more air than anything else.
