WAITING IN VAIN
A WASHINGTON POST CRITIC’S CHOICE
“Erotic and sensual … the prose is passionate, sexual, and honest.”
—Today’s Black Woman
“Channer’s novel is a wonderful read. It achieves what the best novels should: it takes you outside of yourself and into a world that has been crafted by the author, a world that engulfs you and fully engages you.… Channer is a writer of splendid technical gifted-ness—he relishes language, enjoys the seductive role of the storyteller, and weaves his tale with a certain glee and exuberance that is quite contagious.”
—Weekly Gleaner
“Colin Channer’s writing style … places him as a top contender in the category of contemporary writers.”
—Los Angeles Sentinel
“Channer [is] a writer endowed with a special gift of language; he possesses a painter’s eye … Like Jean Toomer, Channer knows how to tap the rhythm of the pastoral without becoming too somnolent; and unlike the traditional novels of the past, Waiting in Vain is a witty, contemporary book full of well-developed, believable characters.”
—New York Amsterdam News
SATISFY MY SOUL
“Channer’s writing is lushly descriptive … A richly textured love story, culminating in a shocking and unexpected turn of events, Satisfy My Soul explores themes of mysticism, eroticism, and spirituality.”
—Air Jamaica Skywritings
“Channer’s tale is wildly entertaining, erotic and sensual. It is not another black love story; it is a compelling exploration of the deeper meaning of love, the question of faith, and the long reach of history.”
—The Philadelphia Tribune
“Sizzling … wildly entertaining … a smoldering love story with tantalizing dialogue and gritty text … Channer’s mastery of descriptive verse and strong voice are compelling.”
—Black Issues Book Review
“A stunning novel of extraordinary power … highly recommended.”
—Quarterly Black Review
PASSING THROUGH
“Jumping into Passing Through, the third book by Jamaican American author Colin Channer, is akin to visiting a foreign country and sampling its exotic cuisine and unique culture. The communication of that shared experience, in all its perplexing, often disturbing beauty, is what Channer has clearly mastered here.”
—The Virginian-Pilot
“Colin Channer’s collection of short stories form a beautiful mosaic depicting the fictional Caribbean island of San Carlos, and how it transforms over the course of the twentieth century. Emotionally challenging and poetically rendered, Passing Through is a sexy getaway on every page.”
—Odyssey Couleur
“Set on the fictional San Carlos, ‘an island fascinated by the subtleties of blood,’ this imaginative collection chronicles 100 years in the life of a community of interrelated characters … Channer is a gifted storyteller. He marshals the weighty themes of love, sex, race, class and progress into an epic and vibrant narrative.”
—The Washington Post
“The work is a collection of linked stories that feel more sophisticated than anything else he has written, spanning the lives of men and women of various hues caught in the web of race over space and time … In Passing Through, and in all his work, Channer exhibits a remarkable ability to depict intimacy between black men and women. Probably no other novelist writing today produces such genuine and intoxicating portraits of black lovers. Indeed, it is difficult to find images of loving black couples anywhere in the media today.”
—The Globe and Mail
IRON BALLOONS
“The story comes at you with hurricane force and an irresistible title, ‘How to Beat a Child the Right and Proper Way.’ ‘The Right and Proper Way’ is a big breath of a piece … and something of a tour de force.”
—The New York Times
“A collection of short fiction compiled and edited by author Colin Channer, Iron Balloons offers some of today’s most prominent Caribbean writers.… All eleven authors in Iron Balloons know how to tell a story, how to draw richly human characters possessed of complicated motivations. The pacing is generally expert … events turn surprising, then disquieting. Inconspicuous clues pave the way to unexpected destinations.”
—The Toronto Star
“Editor and contributor Colin Channer brings together eleven short stories that were developed and/or polished in Jamaica’s Calabash Writer’s Workshop … The stories share a focus on lushly drawn, believably human characters, while their settings and moods are pleasingly diverse.”
—Boston Herald
“In ‘How to Beat a Child,’ Channer’s imagery is so vivid that the brutal whipping depicted in the story can almost be heard. But Channer allows the beater, a mother straddling the working- and middle-class worlds who is disciplining her rebellious teen daughter to save her from certain destruction, to gain sympathy as she considers class, skin color and social standing in post-colonial Jamaica … A brilliant story.”
—The Observer (UK)
Also by Colin Channer
Iron Balloons (contributor and editor)
Passing Through
Satisfy My Soul
Got to Be Real (four novellas)
Waiting in Vain is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1998 by Colin Channer
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
ONE WORLD is a registered trademark and the One World colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1998
eISBN: 978-0-307-77527-6
www.oneworldbooks.net
v3.1
For my wife, Bridgitte Fouche, who believed
before she knew.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Book One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Book Two
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Book Three
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Book Four
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Acknowledgments
prologue
On the day he met Sylvia, Fire woke up in Blanche’s arms with a numbness in his soul. It was his ninetieth day of celibacy, and the night before had almost been his last for Blanche had tied his wrists in his sleep and pounced on him.
He wanted to talk to her but didn’t know how. Couldn’t decide how to do it without losing his temper or his pride. He searched the room for answers—the arched windows … the rattan chairs … the hardwood floors with the swirling grain …
The mattress stirred. He heard the strike of her match. Felt the heat. And the tidal pull of her lips. She was naked, and the urgency of smoking did not disturb her breasts, which were hard and still like turtl
es.
A lizard crawled from the windowsill to the peak of the angled ceiling and slid down the pole of the old brass fan whose blades were sheathed in straw. It flicked its tongue and wagged its head, shaking loose a fold of skin, and puffed a red balloon.
Fire watched it closely, enchanted by its beauty; Blanche sucked her teeth and said it was a nuisance. He didn’t answer and she began to taunt it, choked it with rings of smoke till it arched its back and sprang. It fell on her belly with a thwack and did a war dance on her birthmark, a swatch of brown below her navel. She watched it for a while, amused by its bravery, then whipped her body sideways, shimmering the flesh on her hips, and spilled the lizard to the floor.
Fire closed his eyes.
Last night he’d dreamed that they’d wallowed in a muddy ditch in a sunflower field. Her belly was wet with almond oil and her nipples were gummed with molasses. A believer in fate and the wisdom of dreams, he’d been dreaming of molasses for months now. And molasses, he knew, as an intuitive man, was the airborne scent of love. Blanche was not the woman though. He was sure. And denial was a way of preparing for her … whoever she might be.
Blanche watched as he rose, snatched glances as he dressed. He was tall and rangy and his hair was a cluster of twists and curls. His body looked like a pencil sketch, proportioned but not detailed, except in the chest and upper back.
He went to the terrace and sat in a rocker beneath a brace of ferns, which rustled and fluttered like moody hens. The land cruised away below him, drained through an orchard to an old stone fence, then plunged in an avalanche of crabgrass and buttercups to a terraced farm. Beyond the valley, surreal through the mist, was the broad, flat face of Kingston.
He took a mango from a bowl and peeled it with his teeth. What would he say to her? How would he say it? She was singing in the shower now. He imagined her body—the swell of her thighs, the rise of her ass. And, of course, her breasts. When would he say it? Soon, he thought … but not right now.
Resting the fruit on a stack of books, he picked up the poem he’d begun the day before.
I dare not love you as you deserve.
It is not that I don’t know how.
I do understand the language of love,
and were it a different world
I would write you poems etching you
into the tender cliché of Negril’s palmy coast …
He didn’t know where he’d take it. He didn’t understand poetry really. He’d never studied it. He believed in it as an act of faith.
A flock of birds curled into view. Bird. He began to think of Ian now. They used to call him Bird as a boy for his hawkish nose and pelican legs. What will it be like to see him again? He checked his watch. It was eleven. Air Jamaica was leaving at three; and they were always on time. He would be in New York at seven.
Blanche came out and joined him. She was wearing one of his shirts. It was a soft tangerine with a broad camp collar and flaps on the pleated pockets. A few months short of fifty, she moved with the angular vim of a teenager. She leaned against the banister, a Rothmans between her lips.
Age had refined her beauty, had streaked her hair with silver and added lines and accents to the poetry of her face—commas that made him pause at her eyes, dashes that framed her mouth. She had brows like Frida Kahlo, and lips like Chaka Khan.
“New York,” she began. “How long are you going to be there?”
“Just the weekend,” he said.
“Then you go to London. And you’re coming back when?”
“The end o’ August.”
“Three months.”
She glanced at the old Land Rover beneath the orange tree. Mud encrusted its rusting grill. The windshield was down. The top was off.
“You might need more than a duffel and a knapsack, you know.”
He didn’t answer. There were footsteps in the kitchen beneath them. What the hell was Miss Gita doing?
“Miss Gita!” he called out as he leaned over the railing. “How much time ah must tell you to rest yourself?”
Miss Gita limped into view with a tray of coffee, dressed in a fading floral shift, her hair a silver line between her face and a red bandanna. An old woman with brown skin like masala, her parents had come from India in the early nineteen hundreds as indentureds—after slavery.
“Ah was only cutting up some tings,” she said. “Doan mek nuh fuss over dat. And plus is work ah work here. Is not charity.”
“Awright, bring it then.”
He settled back in his chair and listened as she shuffled through the creaking house, which was yellow and white with lattice trim and a shingled roof arranged in peaks. The ground floor was made of masonry, and the second floor of wood.
“What ah should bring for you from New York, Miss Gita?”
He wished she’d say, “My son.” But she’d given up hope. He stared at her face, which had been thrown off balance by a stroke. It was hard to believe she’d been young once, he thought. Young and beautiful. And wanted by men. Poor Miss Gita. She wasn’t a saint; but she’d paid her dues in life. Her blind eye swam out of focus. The good one anchored his gaze.
“Bring a missus,” she replied. “The place need a woman. I don’t like taking order from people who don’t live ere.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said awkwardly. Miss Gita left and he took a sip of coffee. It wasn’t sweet enough.
Blanche refused to drink hers in protest. She filled her mouth with a cigarette instead. She struck a match. It didn’t spark. Her fingers were shaky. Nerves. She fed the Rothmans to the wind.
As she watched him pick up the mango, she marveled anew at his face. Like reggae it was a New World hybrid, a genetic mélange of bloods that carried in their DNA memories of the tribes that fought and fucked on the shores of the Americas—Chinese and Arab, English and Scotch from his father’s side; and from his mother’s, Dutch and Portuguese Sephardic Jew. But the final combination—brown like sun-fired clay, cheeks high and spread apart; nose narrow with a rounded tip; lips wide and fluted—was vibrantly Yoruba and Akan.
Last night was wrong, Blanche said to herself. But she’d been holding back for months now … had even thought she would get through it. But last night, knowing he’d be leaving today just made her desperate. Or was it angry? Three months is a long time for a woman, she thought, especially with a man like this, one who makes love from the inside out—from the core of her soul where she hides her fears, to the taut muscles on the back of her neck. And the way he was eating that mango—the flesh becoming slush and dripping down his arm.
The juice was inking the nib between her legs, making her want to draft an epic on his face. Couldn’t he just screw her? She’d take just that. So what if the love was gone? The first time had been just a screw. And she had no regrets. Seeing him nude that first time had made her think of holidays, of turkey legs slathered with gravy. At first she thought he’d be a rammer, a longhorn bedroom bully, which would’ve been fine. She liked a little roughness at times. But he held her like a dancer, assumed that he would lead, and frigged her with finesse. He understood her needs. Wordplay for him was fore-play. Her thighs were the covers of an open book—a journal lined with fantasies and fears. He read her like a child, slowly, with his nose against the page, using a finger to guide his way. So he knew when to baby her and when to bitch her up.
If he didn’t want to screw her, she thought, couldn’t they just flirt? Flirting was more than his pastime. It was a condition. He couldn’t help himself. He was intelligent and amusing, which was why women fell for him. That’s why she had fallen. In the days when he loved her, his words kissed her ears like butterfly wings. Now they stung like wasps: “I don’t want you anymore. Leave me alone. I don’t care how you feel.”
She forced a smile. He didn’t respond, but she knew he wanted her. She could feel it. What to do? What to say? She wanted to be the mango so he could suck her down to the seed.
“That looks good,” she said. Maybe they wo
uld screw if she aroused him. “Would you like to share it?”
He looked at her, looked away, then stretched the mango toward her. She nibbled the tip and licked it carefully, glossed it with her saliva, then, working like a boa constrictor, pulled for a second into her mouth the fruit and his trembling fingers.
A whale began to surface through his deep blue jeans. A voice said, “Suck it.” A strange voice, little more than a murmur. Then he gathered it was his and leaned away from her. Licking nectar off her chin, she stared at him. He tried to glare, but couldn’t—couldn’t even speak.
“Kiss me.”
The words were hers. He tried to resist. Thought he had, until his tongue was a honey stick in hot tea. Soon he was melting into memory … into their first kiss ten years ago in Cuba.
She was standing on a street corner in Old Havana, a map in her hand, using her own brand of filleted Spanish to explain to a group of curious onlookers that the Yanquis didn’t hate them, that the Yanquis in fact pitied them and really hated the French, who they found repugnant and smug. She didn’t know how to say “smug” in Spanish.
“Apuesto,” he said from the back, “pulcro.” Their eyes met.
“Excuse me,” she said, as the crowd trailed away, “do you speak English?”
“No,” he replied. “Do you?” She was wearing a lavender dress and sandals. He was wearing an Exodus T-shirt and Red Army boots. He liked her voice. She spoke with a flourish, as if her words were meant to be drawn in calligraphy.
They drifted into a walk, cruised the cobblestoned streets, brushed against each other as they passed under arbors of billowing clothes. She took photographs of the crumbling houses … posed on the hoods of vintage cars. It was her first visit to Cuba, she told him. She was forty, and taught English and Near Eastern studies at Columbia. Her father was Jamaican, her mother from Iran. She’d been raised outside Toronto.
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