Not for Everyday Use

by Elizabeth Nunez

  —All babies spit up, I say. I am glaring at him, my eyes on fire.

  —Go home, Mrs. H—. Come back Monday.

  It is Friday. They have already reported me as a negligent mother, an abusive mother, my son in need of government protection. The social services office is closed; the staff has gone home for the weekend. I will have to wait until Monday. They do not tell me this, but I know that this is the case.

  What did I expect my mother to do when I told her what had happened to me? I was in America, the land of opportunity. Everything will work out. Everything works out in America.

  My mother does not understand American racism; she does not understand that here her class does not trump her color. I have been harsh with my brother Richard, but there is some truth in what he says. I rail against his insistence that only in America does he confront racism, arguing that it is his light skin that gives him a pass in Trinidad, privilege to enter the island’s high society without question. But when I say this to him, I am also aware I am only partially right. If he were pitch black and he were a doctor, the very same doors in Trinidad would be open to him.

  I am a college professor. I was a college professor at the time I had my son, but my profession, my class, counted for nothing when that young, inexperienced white doctor, carrying with him years of American history, deep-rooted prejudices that define a black man or woman as less than a white man or woman, walked into my hospital room. He didn’t have to ask who I was, what I did. He simply looked at me and assumed.

  Fixed in my mother’s mind are images of Americans she had seen in the 1950s movies she loves. She does not notice there are no black people in those movies, or if there are, they are saucer-eyed, big grins plastered on lips exaggerated to make them more servile and farcical. Those black people are not in her social class. My mother identifies with the Americans in her social class; it does not occur to her that all of them are white.

  To my mother Americans are incredibly polite. Even the gas station attendant says thank you. In the department store, the saleslady follows her. I tell her the gas station attendant wants a tip; the saleslady is afraid she’ll steal something. My mother doesn’t believe me.

  So I tell her that her son, the surgeon, cannot drive his Mercedes in New Jersey without being stopped by the police at least once a week. To avoid confrontation, he allows other cars to pass him; he drives strictly within the speed limit. “That’s what he should do,” my mother replies. “One should always obey the law.” When I ask her about the other cars that were speeding, she shakes her head. “One cannot always count on luck,” she declares.

  What if I tell her what has happened to her son just recently, in 2011? She is no longer alive; I cannot tell her. So I’ll tell you, Reader.

  It’s New Year’s Eve, my brother’s patient is in labor; it’s a difficult case. The hospital calls; the woman is fighting for her life. My brother doesn’t wait to change his clothes. He jumps in his Mercedes dressed as he is, in an old pair of jeans and a torn sweater, and he speeds down the turnpike. The inevitable happens: the police stop him. He shows the officer his ID. He is a doctor. “Oh yeah?” the officer sneers. It is clear he thinks the ID is a fake. “What hospital?” My brother explains the situation. It is urgent, dire. “Let me see your hospital papers.” My brother has learned to hold his temper. He has learned to be cool. America’s black president is cool, too cool, his critics say. He should show some real emotion, they say. How can we tell when he is really angry? Does he have real feelings? But black people in America know that emotions can get you locked up. They stay cool. They say, “Yes sir. No sir,” when they speak to the police.

  “Here is the phone number, sir,” my brother says. “Call the hospital.”

  The officer grins and withdraws. He does not call the hospital. After all, it’s New Year’s Eve; everybody wants to party. “Okay, but let that be the last time,” he warns, then winks at my brother. “Do me a favor, lay off the champagne. Okay, man?”

  My brother tells us this story and we listen in silence. “I suppose it was because I was dressed so casually,” he says. “The officer couldn’t imagine a doctor would be dressed the way I was.”

  We nod in agreement. No one believes what my brother has just said and neither does he, but for a moment we allow his excuse to take the edge off the humiliation we feel. No matter how high we may climb up the professional ladder, we will always be judged as inferior. My mother did not understand that. She was a brown-skinned woman, but doors parted for her in Trinidad. She belonged to the island’s upper-middle class.

  Why didn’t my mother come to New York when I needed her, when I found myself accused of being a heroin addict, an abusive mother? Why didn’t she take my side? “It was probably as the hospital said, a mistake. Your son is doing fine now.” That’s what she made herself believe.

  Paul McCartney was sixteen when he wrote the lyrics to his song “When I’m Sixty-Four.” A young man in love worries about the future. Will his girlfriend still love him when he’s sixty-four? He asks the question that troubles his spirit: Will you still need me, will you still feed me / When I’m sixty-four? I am sixty-four.

  Does my mother love me? I do not have my answer, though my future is here now. My mother sent me away when I was still a child, then she abandoned me again. Years have passed. I have allowed my resentment to simmer quietly, to fuse into the undying embers of an ancient grievance. But I am not a child now. It is 2008. My mother is still alive. There is time for me to rid myself of this stone in my heart.

  22

  And a miracle happens. I am a skeptic, but what else can I call the events that lead to my coming to Trinidad three times in 2008, the year my mother dies? What stars had to be aligned? God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. So writes the eighteenth-century English poet William Cowper. How often had I heard my Anglican grandmother sing the hymn that was set to those words!

  I am awarded a sabbatical leave, and without much forethought I decide to spend the spring semester in Trinidad. I call my friend, the eminent scholar Dr. Kenneth Ramchand. He was then associate provost at the newly established University of Trinidad and Tobago and head of the arts department. He tells me I can teach a course in creative writing if I am willing to forgo my usual salary. Once we come to an agreement, I call my parents. I will be staying with them for three months. If my mother feels any trepidation, as is usually the case when any of her foreign-based children visit (she would repaint rooms, send Petra in a tizzy to clean and polish the brass, buff the tiled floors, bake special breads), she gives me no evidence. “Come,” she says. “Your father and I would welcome a long visit from you. It’s about time.”

  It’s about time. Is she thinking what I am thinking? Is she thinking it’s about time we resolve the unspoken tensions that persist between us?

  * * *

  I arrive in mid-February. In the lobby of the airport, returning Trinidad nationals are waving and shouting happily to families and friends who rush to greet them. Cars are waiting for them at the curb, engines throbbing. Young men—husbands, sons, uncles, nephews—fling open doors and dash out to grab suitcases. Another explosion of greetings. More hugs and kisses. The parking police officer indulges them. He grins and waits patiently. Finally, he calls out to them: “Okay, okay. Enough now. You have time for all that when you get home.”

  There is no one at the airport to greet me. In the past my father would have been here, but he is too old to drive now and my two sisters and my brother are at work. I must take a taxi like the rest of the tourists. I am awash by deep feelings of loss. I have come back to Trinidad, but not to home. I turn away from the happy, raucous crowd.

  The cab driver senses my foreignness. “We just finish building this airport,” he says, his hand sweeping across the length of the new building. “You see the Carnival costumes inside? Nice, ’eh? You know we have the best carnival in the world.” His face is aglow with pride.

  I am tempted to say I’m a nat
ional too, I am part of “we”; I know our history, I know about Carnival, but I can tell he has rehearsed this speech for people who look like me. Even with my brown skin, I am pale from the cold winter months away from the sun. My white linen shirt is glued to my back, drenched with perspiration.

  “Number one in the world, for sure. Better than Rio.” He talks on, pacing his words, pronouncing them as carefully as he would for the tourists who have a hard time understanding the Trinidadian accent. In the end, the th’s prove too much of an effort for him and he gives up. “What you tink of de pictures of de prime ministers on de wall? We have one for de queen too? We was a colony of England, you know. But all dat done.” When he drops me off, I give him a big tip. In American dollars.

  My mother is all smiles when she sees me. She throws one arm around my neck, the other across my back, crushing my ribs. She kisses me. This time it’s not the usual peck, her lips barely grazing my skin. It’s a full kiss she gives me; it lingers, and I feel the warm, wet softness of her mouth on my cheek.

  This is my first indication that my mother wants to break down the wall between us, that for her it’s about time too. When we part, I reach for her hand; her fingers are icy cold.

  My father shuffles to the gate to meet me, but there is no doubt he is delighted I am here. He can’t seem to stop chuckling. His eyes twinkle mischievously. “You looking good or you good looking?” He laughs uproariously, tickled by his witticism.

  Petra, too, is happy to see me. “The house get so quiet sometimes,” she says. I imagine it gets quieter when she leaves in the late afternoon. My mother and father are alone when she goes. Their old gardener has retired. With the exception of Petra, all the people who now work for my parents are strangers. My sisters and brother drop by, but not daily.

  Is this the price for ambition? Did my parents think of this possibility, that they could be left virtually alone in their old age if all their children go abroad?

  My father follows me to the girls’ room. “Let her unpack, Waldo,” my mother says querulously. “She’s just arrived. Give her time.” My father stands sheepishly at the door.

  We have lunch. I sit next to my mother. She passes the dish of fried chicken to me. “I didn’t know if you liked it stewed, so I told Petra to fry it. Like Kentucky Fried Chicken, you know.” She grins shyly.

  She means to say she does not know if I can still stomach Trinidadian food, the way they make stewed chicken with burnt sugar and lots of spices.

  “I like fried chicken, but I love it stewed too,” I respond. My mother clears her throat and exchanges knowing glances with Petra, who has been watching me too as I bite into the chicken.

  After lunch, my mother goes to her room to watch the soaps. My father retires to the couch in the veranda. Soon he is asleep. My sisters tell me that lately his naps after lunch last until teatime. Old age, they say, the body preparing itself for the long sleep. I am glad I am here before it’s too late.

  We have tea at four with hot scones Petra baked and jam. My mother and I talk around each other, about the latest news in America, the latest news in Trinidad. She asks about my son, about my work, about my friends she has met on her trips to New York. She veers away from anything too personal. She does not ask about my life, though I know she wants to know if I am happy, if all is going well. If I have met someone who could be with me for the rest of my life. There is always hope; I could get an annulment like Jacqueline and remarry in the church. I could have a husband. I answer her questions but I tell her also that my life is full. I have good friends, and my son and his family are a comfort to me. Her eyes brighten. I am pleased to know I have put her at ease.

  My sisters and brother visit but soon leave to be with their families. Darkness comes quickly and suddenly. I am shading my eyes from the glare of the sun one moment and the next I need clear glasses to find my way to the light switch on the wall. My father retires early. At exactly at six thirty, he closes the drapes in the dining room and living room and switches off most of the indoor lights. He leaves one dim light on in the veranda. My mother complains. “It’s like a tomb in here.” But she follows my father to the bedroom.

  I go to the den and switch on the TV. I find myself hungry for news from America. Only two American news stations are available, CNN and Fox. In New York I never watch Fox News, but now I am so anxious to hear American voices, I find myself switching back and forth from CNN to Fox. Two hours later, I am about to turn in for the night when I hear my mother’s footsteps padding along the corridor. “Is everything all right?” she asks me. I nod and smile. “I love you,” she says, and turns away before I can respond.

  But would I have responded? Would I have said, “I love you too,” as my son always says to me?

  It has been two years now since my mother has begun ending all my telephone calls to her with a quick and abrupt, “I love you.” She puts down the phone before I can answer. Now she has said the same words to me in person and I am strangely uncomfortable.

  I make up my mind to find some sort of distraction the next night. I call a friend who has lived many years abroad and has returned to retire in Trinidad. We cannot meet tomorrow but the following day she will have someone pick me up and bring me to a small dinner party she is hosting.

  I teach the next day. By six thirty, the house is shrouded in silence and darkness again except for the insistent croaking of the frogs outside, the drone of voices on the TV in my parents’ bedroom, and the light in the den where I find myself oddly entertained by the rantings of Bill O’Reilly. I can hardly wait to go to my friend’s home tomorrow.

  The man who picks me up the next evening tells me he cannot bring me back. My friend assures me she will, though I will have to wait until all her guests have left. It is two in the morning when she finally drives me back to my parents’ home. My mother is up, waiting for me in the kitchen. “I was worried. I wanted to be sure you were safe. These are not good times in Trinidad. The crime, you know . . .” She had obviously not slept a wink. Old, her body failing, she had summoned the strength to stay awake for me. Still, I cannot get my tongue to say the words I love you, though they stir in my heart. My mother does not repeat them to me, though I am certain she wants to.

  And so we continue day after day, night after night. We are stubborn, fixed in our habits. Or is it that we don’t need words to express what we know each other feels? The proof is in the doing, in the behavior, I tell myself. I am here, in her house, to spend time with her.

  Sometimes, when I do not have to teach, I sit with my mother in her bedroom as she follows the soaps on TV or watches the religious channel. Sometimes, instead of going to the veranda, my father stretches out on the bed, next to his wife, and naps. One afternoon, my mother’s favorite soap is cut short for the simultaneous airing of the pope’s visit to New York. My mother does not mind; she is anxious to see the pope. I am anxious too, but for a bit of New York, a bit of home. From the minute the program begins my mother’s eyes are trained on the TV, tracking the procession that precedes the pope’s entrance to the church. I am glued to the TV too, but not for the pope. I am searching the crowd pressed against the restraining ropes, hoping to see someone I know, a familiar face.

  The pope arrives. Suddenly my mother, who has been sitting on the edge of the bed, rears back, her face wrinkled with disgust. She makes wide waving gestures with her arms, crossing them back and forth in front of the TV. “I don’t believe in all that,” she says, shaking her head vigorously.

  I can barely trust my ears. “You don’t believe in the pope?”

  “All that gold around him, all those fancy vestments!”

  I stare at her. “Him?”

  “Yes, the pope. What does all that gold around him have to do with God, or the poor people who are dying of starvation and disease?”

  My sentiments exactly! “Yes. What does all that gold have to do with God?”

  “Or Jesus.”

  I hold my breath. My mother is criticizing the reli
gion she has always obeyed slavishly, which she had made us, her children, obey slavishly when we lived under her roof!

  “Jesus was born in a manger to a poor woman,” she says, fanning the air dismissively.

  I am more relieved than I am in shock. I release my breath. We are bonding, my mother and I. It is a baby step we take, to be sure, but a beginning.

  Two days later, my mother’s prayer group arrives. “One of the hardest things about growing old,” my mother says to me, “is that by the time you are my age, all your friends have died.” She has always been a social butterfly. My father was married to her and to his work, and when he could no longer do his work, all that was left for him was my mother. But my mother made new friends. She not only joined a neighborhood ladies club, she also became a member of a prayer group that is meeting in her home today.

  The members arrive together in one car. I leave the veranda and go to my bedroom, but soon my mother calls out: “Elizabeth! Come! We have a question for you.”

  All the women in the prayer group are younger than my mother. One of them sits imperiously opposite her, her back ramrod straight. She turns to face me when I walk through the glass sliding door into the veranda, her eyes challenging mine. Your mother may have a question for you, but I don’t, her eyes seem to say. I’m the expert here. Don’t you come with your liberal American foolishness and confuse my friends.

  “P— says . . .” My mother points to the woman with the ramrod back and repeats her interpretation of a passage in the Bible. “What do you think, Elizabeth?”

  My first instinct is that she wants to show me off, Elizabeth her professor daughter, but something in her smile, sly like the proverbial Cheshire cat, tells me that this time is different. I sense a setup. She wants me on her side. The younger women have their darts pointed at her. She wants us to do battle together against them.