Africaville

by Jeffrey Colvin

  Several weeks after his daughter and new son-in-law visited, George sat by the living room window, peering out at the drifts of snow, reliving the visit. When Kath and I did this, and when Kath and I did that, and when Kath and I did the other. Did the man she married ever shut up? Soon George felt he knew what madness had seized his daughter. That French college in Montreal had corrupted her mind, made her believe she could live happy married to a white man. That French college was the reason Kath added insult to injury by announcing a done wedding. What about a mother’s wish for her daughter? Many neighbors agreed. When another daughter from the bluff won a scholarship to the college in Montreal, the father said no way was he going to allow his daughter to attend.

  “I have to give the boy something,” Shirley says, returning to the patio to find the box still on George’s lap.

  George places the box underneath the lounge chair, lies back, and closes his eyes again. “You’re giving him lunch.”

  In Centervillage, two rooms have been added onto Woods Bluff Elementary and Secondary. Yet the school looks smaller than Kath remembers. From the side window of the Regent, she can almost see Mrs. Eatten in the front doorway, calling the lower grades in from recess. The post office has been moved across the road to what looks like a rooming house. And Mrs. Tee Tee’s Sundries has a new owner. But the Hurricane Lamb Café and the Hardware Barn are still run by the same families. Beyond the tree line up the road, where they get out of the car, comes the noise of a pickup baseball game on Nobody’s Acre.

  The brief afternoon rain shower has forced Marcelina to move the tables of food and the small stage from the lawn of Basinview Baptist to the church’s basement. The better tables down here have been reserved for the elderly neighbors who still live in the Hindquarter or Centervillage.

  “The nerve,” Shirley says, when she realizes that her family is being led to a back corner with several small card tables holding handmade signs that read RESERVED FOR OUR NEIGHBORS FROM NEW JAMAICA. “How dare Miss M put us this far from the food and the stage. And where are our tickets for the buffet? When I see Marcelina, I’m definitely giving her the what for.”

  Kath cannot be bothered to complain. She takes the seat at a table that offers the best view of the crowd. It took a while to get down here with all the hugs she gave upstairs. And to think she was worried her former acquaintances would chastise her for being gone so long. All the old neighborhood kids and the former school classmates wanted to talk about was her son, Etienne. Few of the elders—the parents and grandparents down here—have recognized her yet. But they soon will.

  Marcelina descends the stairs, followed by several men carrying trays of pies and cakes. Barely an inch over five feet tall, she moves in a green-and-red dress with a large silk bow on the front pocket. With a laugh, Marcelina ignores the grousing from several New Jamaica residents, not happy about their seats. She also ignores Kath, heading straight for Etienne.

  “And this must be little Omar,” Marcelina says, practically pulling Etienne out of his seat. “The boy looks just like his daddy.”

  “I don’t use the name Omar,” Etienne says, looking at Timothee.

  Marcelina does not seem to have heard. “Come with me, son,” she says. “Let’s meet some folks.”

  Threading through the tables behind Marcelina, who is presenting Etienne as if he were her own son, Kath tries to remember the basement as it was when she was a Sunday school student. The table holding the fish cakes, meat pies, and lime punch is where she, Bonnie Ovits, and Steppie Caulden used to loiter at the water pail. In one back corner there once stood a large globe where she used to point out Jericho and Mesopotamia City and the River Damascus.

  They reach a table where neither Marcelina’s aunt Oneresta, wearing a small prissy hat, nor Reverend Steptoe, in a rumpled gray suit and a bright-yellow tie, seems to understand when Marcelina presents Etienne to them. “We remember you, boy,” Opal Bennington says as her sister Gussie nods. “You came out of your momma fat as a goose.”

  Eventually they drift to a table not far from the picture display. A tall plywood board sitting on A-frame legs, it is covered in a light-blue crepe paper. Big letters across the top of the board spell out A SPLASH OF JUNE MEMORY CELEBRATION 1953.

  “Remember what I told you, sister,” Marcelina says, leaving Kath and Etienne. “Only one picture per family on the board today. We don’t have room for more.”

  Kath heads toward the board later carrying several pictures, not at all happy that she can pin up only one. She will pin up the picture of Etienne standing at his school desk wearing shorts and suspenders. But she can’t help wondering if there will be pictures of Kiendra on the board. She has seen no Penncampbells today. Since Guivalier died, she has heard, Rosa rarely leaves the house. And nobody has heard from Dominion in more than a year. Could she sneak up the picture of her and Kiendra?

  “Is that a light-skinned colored man sitting with George and Shirley?” a woman asks the man standing with her and blocking Kath’s path to the board.

  “Must be,” the man says. “I don’t imagine George would bring a white man to this party.”

  Neither the man nor the woman averts their eyes as Kath steps between them. Nor does either look embarrassed by what they have said.

  “I remember your boy’s name used to be Omar,” the woman says as Kath pins the picture of Etienne on the board. “Now they tell me it’s something else.”

  “Do you imagine Omar would have minded his child being raised by a white man?” the man asks Kath.

  “Don’t give my husband that sideways glance,” the woman says. “He was just speaking his mind.”

  “I don’t remember asking what was on his mind,” Kath says.

  Kath pins up the second picture—of her and Kiendra in the cutouts at the Pictou County Mining and Cattle Fair, their dark faces on the bodies of the children of a white couple. The woman studies the picture with a scowl. “What kind of nonsense is this?” she says.

  “It is an odd picture, I admit,” Kath says. “But it has Kiendra Penncampbell in it.”

  “I know who Kiendra Penncampbell was,” the woman says. “But it’s a dumb picture. Take it down.”

  One of the perils of being estranged from the old neighborhood is that Kath is rusty in the ways of pleasantly disagreeing with her elders from the bluff. The dark-brown woman could be an Ovits, a family in which laughter disarms. Then again, she could be a Higgins or a Shuttlesworth, families whose members can be swayed by a biblical argument about love and friendship. The light-skinned man in the coat and tie looks like Clemmond Green’s uncle. To argue with that man was always a waste of time.

  Kath asks the couple their names. Before they can respond, a woman steps up to the board.

  Kath lets out a loud scream, causing heads to turn at nearby tables. She gives her former school classmate Steppie Caulden a long hug. Kath and Steppie get to talking loudly as the couple moves away. “What were those old chickens walking off looking so mad about?” Steppie asks Kath.

  “Maybe that they’ve spent their lives somewhere nobody wants to be.”

  Steppie gives a hard face. “I know why some of the neighbors have a bee in their bonnet about you,” she says. “They say you’re ashamed to have lived on the bluff.”

  “I am not ashamed.”

  “Then where have you been?”

  Steppie shows Kath a picture pinned to a corner of the board. In it, Steppie sits with a group of boys on the gymnasium bleachers at the community center. A warm feeling erupts in Kath when she realizes that Omar is in the picture.

  “Wednesday evenings were colored night at the gym,” Kath says.

  “And most of the fun was had after we finished playing volleyball,” Steppie says.

  “My, how young you look, Steppie.”

  After Steppie goes, Kath moves closer to the picture. She has already noticed that Steppie’s hand is on Omar’s shoulder. But does she see Omar’s hand on Steppie’s thigh? She knew Steppie and
Omar had gone on walks together. Had they done more? Were they ever together?

  Why on earth has Steppie put up that picture? Kath wonders, heading back to join her relatives. Was it jealousy? Could be. After all, Steppie has no husband. But no woman deserves criticism for telling the truth about her relationship with a man. Kath began to believe that during the troubled months after her relationship with Oscar Mislick ended.

  Somebody outside wants to see you,” Marcelina tells Kath a little while later, as Kath is coming out of the small toilet in the basement.

  “Who?”

  “Go up and see for yourself.”

  Exiting the side door of the church, Kath looks out toward the basin. The rain has stopped. Out there on the bluff a man sits on a large protruding boulder. The wind is heavy, and she tugs on her sweater as she walks across the wet grass. The man wears a light jacket and has a thick beard with a bit of gray in it. Behind him is the expanse of Dartmouth across the bay. As Kath approaches she gets a good look at the man’s face. It is Clemmond Green.

  After hugging Clemmond she sits on the boulder. It is damp, but she doesn’t care.

  “You still married?” Clemmond asks.

  Kath presents her hand. While Clemmond studies the ring, she notices the scar on the side of his head. He got that the day he ran into a post at the bus stop. He was seven at the time.

  “I’m on at the docks now,” Clemmond says. “Big money. Enough for a family.”

  “I heard you don’t have a wife and kids.”

  “Some women think I’m too old.” Clemmond unzips his jacket. “I’ve been thinking about you. I wonder what it would have been like if you and I had been better friends.”

  “You’re just reminiscing too much. Do you forget how much you taunted the younger kids? Have you seen Jessup, or Bonnie Ovits? Just wait until those two get here.”

  Clemmond laughs and looks toward the church. “Marcelina’s parties are all the same,” he says. “Just the punch is different.”

  “My first attendance has not gone as well as I planned,” Kath says. “Not everybody is happy to see me and my family.”

  “Folks don’t know you because you’ve made yourself scarce.”

  “Steppie Caulden said as much. But I haven’t meant to be a stranger.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Clemmond holds Kath’s elbow and they walk back toward the church. Several people standing near the doorway watch them approach. Kath knows she ought to tell Clemmond to let go, but his hand feels good touching her elbow. Before they reach the church doors, Kiryl Platt approaches. It is obvious to Kath that Kiryl wants a word with her. When he was her supervisor at the Platts’ business in Simms Corner, the impatient look like the one he wears now used to make her nervous. But not today.

  The boldness of her approach with Clemmond seems to have disarmed Kiryl. No doubt Clemmond has heard the Platts’ businesses are not doing as well as they did when Chevy Platt was vigorous. Kiryl has purchased two of the vacated houses in the West Slope, living in one with his wife and renting the other. But while he lives in New Jamaica now, compared to Clemmond he is a newcomer to the bluff. Perhaps Marcelina has it right. In many matters here on the bluff, the newcomers will have to wait their turn.

  “Just a minute,” Kath tells Kiryl as she grabs Clemmond’s hand and directs him toward Dempsey Road. “I want to walk Clemmond to his car.”

  The three giant punch bowls have probably half a ladle of lime punch altogether. But this end of the long food table is the only place in the crowded basement where Etienne can be alone.

  Hey, boy, whatcha know good?

  Etienne looks over his shoulder, thinking someone from one of the tables has called out to him. The crowd has quieted, though, some attendees dozing as they await another speech now that the children’s musical performance has ended. Etienne rakes the bottom of one bowl with a ladle, wishing he could blow this old-folks shindig. Why can’t he go upstairs where his mother seems to have disappeared to? But then he doesn’t know any of the teenagers hanging around up there. Also, his mother says there are a few more people here he must meet—including the man walking beside the long table.

  He approaches, not looking in Etienne’s direction. Fanning his neck with a paper plate, he scans the scraps of fried cod and stewed chicken and the paltry traces of rice and greens clinging to the large bowls and platters.

  “You probably don’t know who I am,” he says, arriving near Etienne with an extended hand.

  “Yes, I do. You’re my uncle.”

  “And not a good uncle, I guess.”

  Etienne tilts another bowl to ladle up more punch. Earlier, at the car, Kath had pointed out this man. Etienne had taken note of the small figure up on Dempsey Road, wearing pleated khaki-colored slacks and a short-sleeve shirt with a wide collar and talking to what looked like a young woman in front of a business establishment. Mentioning the man, his mother’s voice had been friendly. She sounded as if Kiryl Platt was a man Etienne just had to meet. What a change from the times he overheard her complain about how Kiryl rarely saw him when he was an infant and how Kiryl was one of those no-good uncles. It was one of the few times Etienne heard her use the word motherfucker.

  “Shirley told me you’re going to summer camp,” Kiryl says, dropping the empty paper plate down on the table. “The woods will be a change for a city boy.”

  “The camp is not in the woods,” Etienne says. “It’s on a school campus.”

  Kiryl looks out at the crowd. When he turns to Etienne, a long, awkward silence ensues, as if he does not know what to say. “I thought I had a picture of your father somewhere at my house,” Kiryl says. “I tried to find it so you could put it up there at the board, but dang thing just wouldn’t come out of hiding. But I will find the picture before you head back to Montreal.”

  “You will?”

  “But to get it, you have to come see me when you get back from the camp. Then you can meet my wife and your cousin.” Kiryl looks down at his shoes. “And you will meet my daddy, too, if he is still with us. Will you come see us when you get back?”

  “If you want, I guess.”

  When Kiryl gives a satisfied grin, it is as if the face in one of the photographs Etienne has seen of his father has come to life. Something in what Etienne sees goes straight to his brain. Too often lately, he finds himself looking for similarities between his mother and himself. He stares at Kiryl’s hands. The long, nervous fingers and knobby wrists are just like his. But can he trust his eyes? With solid certainty he used to tell his friends in grade school about the similarities between him and Timothee. But that was all in his head.

  Etienne takes a drink of punch, feeling the sting of a slap to the middle of his back. His uncle heads for the table where Timothee sits with his aunt Luela and his grandparents, everyone laughing with yet another elderly couple. Today the only thing more annoying than another kiss on his cheek would be another slap on the back from another strange man. So Etienne heads upstairs to look for his mother.

  Black as I Want to Be

  Northumberland County, New Brunswick, 1953

  As he stands crouched on the starting block inside the natatorium of Saint Richelieu, the clap of the starting gun sends a jolt of energy through Etienne’s body and he leaps off the block and into the water.

  Twenty meters into the race, he can sense himself pulling away from the other boys. Yesterday he won every round of the fifty-meter races. Of the defeated boys, only one shook his hand. Reaching out for another stroke, he intends to massacre these same boys over seventy-five meters.

  The cool water feels refreshing. Shouting voices drift up to the high, cantilevered windows, open to let in more chilly morning air. This newly built natatorium was all his father talked about during the drive across Northumberland County two days ago. That and his time as co-captain of the Saint Richelieu swim team. His mother was quiet for most of the drive, although, when they stopped for gasoline, she returned from the restroom anim
ated. Beside her during the orientation in Divine Hall, he could smell the perfume she had sprayed on her arms. It did not totally mask the scent from the cigarette she must have smoked in the bathroom at the roadside station.

  When Etienne recognizes that he might be swimming in this pool for two more years, his desire to avenge yesterday’s slight by the boys diminishes with each stroke. Sensing a swimmer starting to catch up, he imagines Timothee, yelling from the bleachers. Lengthen your strokes. Swim harder. Come on, captain.

  A swimmer is nearly upon him, yet Etienne stops his strokes. He sinks, and when his feet touch the coarse floor tiles he opens his eyes. He lets his body sway with the moving water. A frigid current runs over his feet. Above him on the surface, a laggard is plowing behind the other swimmers.

  When his body drifts up, he flails his arms, pushing his body back to the bottom. Now the water stings his eyes. Irritating bubbles drift out of his nose. His chest feels tight, but there is no problem there. He can stay underwater for quite a while. In his family, his mother is the one with the frail lungs. He never used to fret about her health. However, from four in the morning until the call to athletics at six thirty, he lay in the dormitory bed imagining his mother’s health getting worse in Italy. He does not want this campus to be a reminder of that. Of course, he cannot tell a single boy here on this campus about his fear. The boy will tell the others that he is un fils à maman.

  Etienne did not like the strained smile his mother gave him last year as she lay in the hospital bed, reading the get-well cards made by her pupils. He wanted to see the broad smile she gave when reading a postcard from one of her college friends living overseas. Since leaving the hospital, his mother rarely talks to him about her health. During dinner all she talks about are her students.

  Drifting to the surface of the pool, Etienne tries to forget the goodbyes last Sunday outside Divine Hall. After a hug, he asked his mother if he’d have to come back here in the fall. Getting no answer, he walked to the curb, where Timothee sat in the Regent with the windows up. As his head clears the water’s surface, Etienne recalls that nothing he said enticed his father to roll down the window to listen.