Africaville

by Jeffrey Colvin

  In the dining hall later, Etienne eats his cheese sandwich and stewed figs, watching the large clock on the wall. At exactly six thirty, he heads for the exit.

  “I waited for you this afternoon. At the handball court,” says the boy who has followed Etienne outside. Orlando Quay, in a denim vest and tan-and-black rock-and-roll shoes, is a thin boy with a red patch of acne across his forehead. “Why didn’t you show?”

  “Didn’t feel like playing,” Etienne says.

  “That’s not a good reason. You want to go play Ping-Pong?”

  “Don’t know if I feel like it.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll just walk then.”

  The boys cross the South Lawn down one of the long diagonal brick walkways. At the center of the lawn, Etienne leaps over a row of tulips. A few yards on they approach the Hindu temples. There, Tyrell Levesque is leaning against the lip of the fountain, emptying a pebble out of his loafer. As they get closer, Tyrell puts on his large sunglasses and starts speaking French with his cousin, who arrived late on Monday from Saint Lucia. Despite the cool air, both of the boys’ dark faces are shining.

  “Well, what do you know,” Tyrell says when Etienne gets close. “Here comes Stringer-Beaner.”

  “That’s not my name,” Etienne says.

  “Philippe Casson called you that at dinner yesterday.”

  “What do you want, Tyrell?”

  “Is your mother coming back to visit?”

  “How many times are you going to ask me that?”

  “Three hundred.”

  “She’s in Italy.”

  Tyrell slaps his cousin on the stomach with the back of his hand. “Wait until you see her. She’ll break your heart.”

  “His mother’s sick,” Orlando says. “She’s been in the hospital.”

  For a moment Tyrell looks like he’s wondering what to say. As Etienne and Orlando continue on, Tyrell and his cousin follow.

  “Did you tell him you think his mother ought to drop that white man?” the cousin asks Tyrell.

  “You’ve never met his father,” Orlando says.

  “Still think she ought to drop him,” the cousin says.

  Tyrell glares at his cousin. “You better not say that when she comes back.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then his mother won’t speak to me.”

  “But you’ve already said it yourself,” the cousin says.

  Tyrell punches his cousin’s shoulder. Then he steps to Etienne. “Aren’t you embarrassed to have a white father?”

  “Aren’t you embarrassed to have a bald-headed one?”

  The cousin and Orlando laugh.

  “You ought to be embarrassed, Stringer-Beaner.”

  Etienne stares at a little spit bubble in the corner of Tyrell’s mouth. Yesterday, when he returned to the dormitory from orchestra lessons to dress for afternoon sports, he discovered that someone had sprinkled cinders from the running track into his underwear drawer. It must have been Tyrell. “I think you need to get a new game, Tyrell. Why don’t you tell me something I haven’t heard before?”

  “Etienne looks white himself,” the cousin says.

  “But he’s not,” Tyrell says. “He’s black. Aren’t you black, Stringer-Beaner? Aren’t you black, Etienne?”

  Tyrell and his cousin stand straighter, both sets of shale-colored eyes demanding an answer. The gummed-up zipper on his bomber jacket has been bothering Etienne all day. With a quick jerk now, the slider moves all the way up. “I’m black if I want to be.”

  “You can’t choose to be black,” Tyrell says.

  “You can if you look white like Etienne does,” Orlando says. “Look, his arms are as light as mine.”

  Tyrell makes a face. “I’m glad I’m black.”

  Etienne laughs. “You don’t mean that.”

  Tyrell lands a fist to Etienne’s chest, sending Etienne stumbling back. When Etienne recovers, he swings, knocking the sunglasses off Tyrell’s face. Orlando and the cousin back up as the boys wrestle down to the walkway.

  The two boys continue tussling on the grass until a young camp assistant rushes over. The assistant hesitates, unsure which boy to reach for. Finally, he seizes Tyrell’s arm.

  “You know you’re black,” Tyrell says as the assistant helps him to his feet.

  Etienne frowns at the tear in his jacket sleeve. He looks over at Tyrell, still in the assistant’s grip. “You can’t tell me what I am. I can be whatever I want.”

  Wresting free, Tyrell picks up his sunglasses. He puts them on his face, which is now as hard as the stone walkway. “Believe that and you’re a fool.”

  The following Thursday, no one at Saint Richelieu can explain exactly why Etienne is being sent home—at least not to Luela’s satisfaction. Someone called the hotel on Tuesday evening to tell her about the scuffle Etienne had gotten into earlier with the two boys from Saint Lucia. Had there been another fight? On the ride back to Halifax she doesn’t chastise Etienne too much. But several days later, on Monday morning, tired from having worked two overnight shifts to make up the time she missed going out to Northumberland County, she wants answers. Noticing how upset Etienne still is, she decides to wait a few more days.

  “Couldn’t you at least have stayed out of trouble for a little while longer?” she asks on Saturday, after Etienne has eaten his fried eggs and potatoes. “You only had a few more days to go.”

  Etienne does not answer, so Luela follows him out of the kitchen. From the bedroom doorway she watches him fall onto the unmade bed. “Tyrell kept pestering me,” he says. “So I told him where to put it.”

  “Is talk all you did?”

  Etienne does not answer.

  “I’ll bet that boy’s mother’s going to take a belt to him,” Luela says.

  “She should whip him,” Etienne says. “He’s a fool.”

  “I ought to do the same to you.”

  When she moved back into her parents’ house, Luela replaced the twin beds in the bedroom she had shared with Kath. But the bureau is still here, although it now holds the unnerving sight of the reptile case with glass on three sides. The hump of straw at the far corner of the case means the serpent is still resting. Still, Luela hesitates a moment before entering the bedroom. She shakes her head as she steps over dirty pants, underwear, and socks strewn about the room.

  “You always hang this up,” she says near the bed, where she has picked up the bomber jacket. “Why was it on the floor?”

  “Can’t wear it anymore. The sleeve’s torn.”

  “I patched the sleeve, did you look?”

  “The boys will make fun of me.”

  “Not here in Woods Bluff.”

  “But we are going downtown.”

  “Boy, you have an answer for everything, don’t you?” Luela drops the jacket on the bed beside Etienne. “Put on your shoes,” she says, heading out of the bedroom. “We have to go pick up Shirley soon.”

  Etienne rolls off the bed and onto the floor, where he lies using the jacket as a pillow. On Wednesday, his first night in this bedroom, he fell asleep in his clothes with his body sprawled diagonally across the bed. The next morning, beneath the blanket someone had thrown over him, he opened his eyes expecting to see the dull gray dormitory walls of Saint Richelieu. Instead his eyes were assaulted by colorful birds swarming in a field of light-blue wallpaper. When his eyes adjusted, he recognized the two postcards leaning against the mirror on the bureau. They were from his friends who would be going to Vancouver. One postcard showed a dozen girls in bikinis, all staring up at a billboard of a large ketchup bottle. Etienne is certain one of the camp counselors at Saint Richelieu held on to the postcard several days before handing it over. Etienne had masturbated himself using the postcard one evening in the dormitory bathroom. His best friend, Fabrice, had written something on the back of the postcard in French, using lots of exclamation points. Etienne could only make out two words: beaucoup d’amusement.

  Upon first meeting Fabrice’s par
ents, people are surprised when they learn that the couple is colored. If you look carefully, you might suspect something in his father’s tanned face. But Fabrice’s mother has skin as pale as Etienne’s. Fabrice often says his parents are hell-bent on keeping him colored. In a ski lodge last March, he complained that his parents had dragged him to another lecture by a colored man at the Publik Common. Lately, however, Fabrice seems to resent his parents. “I don’t want to be like them,” he said a few weeks ago. “I blow my own whistle.”

  Etienne rubs at a scuff mark on his shoe. Probably put there by Tyrell Levesque, he thinks. He meant it when he said he didn’t believe Tyrell was glad to be black. Nobody’s glad to be black. They put up with it. He loves his mother and appreciates his relatives in Halifax, but he has no desire to live in the skin they have. He dislikes how some bus drivers and store clerks in Halifax bark at his aunt Luela. Store clerks in Montreal sometimes speak just as rudely to his mother. Tyrell must have witnessed his parents being treated like that. What dullness in his mind prevents him from seeing the trap of his dark skin?

  There must be a way for him to get out of going to the drugstore today, he thinks as he puts on a shoe. His parents will be very upset when they find out that he has been sent home early from the camp. What harm would it have done to tell Tyrell Levesque that he was black? Then he wouldn’t have gotten into this new trouble. But would Tyrell have been satisfied with that answer? Etienne thinks as he picks up the dirty clothes from the floor. No, he would not. With his short attention span, Tyrell would soon have moved on to other foolishness. That idiot would have just started telling the other boys: Etienne isn’t really black.

  Downtown, Luela’s husband, Chamberlain, has parked the car around the corner from the drugstore where they will go to call Italy. “All right,” Luela tells Etienne. “Because you have picked up your room, I will not say anything to Timothee and Kath about you being kicked out of the camp. Not yet.”

  But as they get out of the car, Luela starts to worry that she will not be able to keep the secret. “Could you go with Etienne to make the telephone call?” she asks Shirley.

  Shirley looks up the block to where Etienne has already reached the corner and is looking back. “Why?” she asks. “Are you and your sister fighting?”

  “No, we are not. Kath called me at the hotel a few days ago. I figured I’d give you the opportunity to speak with her.”

  “I’m too old to be walking around downtown by myself.”

  “Etienne will be with you. You’ve heard about all the fistfights he gets into.”

  “Yes, but does he win any?”

  “Can’t you do me this one little favor?”

  Shirley ponders the request for a moment. “No. I think you should come with me and the boy. I don’t know how to operate a telephone.”

  Inside the drugstore, Luela sits in the telephone booth, not sure what she will say when her sister asks how things are going with Etienne. She lifts the receiver with a smile, hoping that will cheer her up.

  Thankfully, Timothee comes on the line first. But his voice sounds heavy. “She’s not doing well today,” he says. “The doctor says she may need a day or two in the hospital.”

  Luela shifts on the stool with her back to Etienne and Shirley. “Can I speak to her?”

  “Of course.”

  Kath comes on the line. “How’s my child doing?”

  “Rather talk about you.”

  “The doctor needs to go in and clear out some fluid is all. Is Etienne with you? Did he like the camp?”

  “You should ask him when you talk to him.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  Luela hesitates. “Timothee’s gone off to talk with the doctor,” Kath says. “We can talk. Did my son get into trouble?”

  Luela turns slightly. When her eyes meet Etienne’s, his face tightens. She turns away from him. “Yes, I’m afraid he did get into trouble.”

  Kath’s voice is now calm and steady, which means Timothee must be back in the room. When Timothee comes back on the line, his voice is calm, too. “I guess I’m ready for him,” he says.

  Luela holds out the phone to Etienne. “Your father doesn’t know yet.”

  Etienne sits in the phone booth. “Hi.”

  “We’ve only got a few minutes,” Timothee says. “Did you like the camp?”

  Etienne grips the receiver tightly. “When are you coming home?”

  “You’re not giving your aunt and grandparents any trouble, are you?”

  “How’s my mother?”

  “Here she is, talk to her.”

  Kath comes on the line. “Hello, baby. We’ve got to be quick.”

  “How are you feeling, Mother?”

  “I’m feeling fine. Be even better in a few days.”

  “Better? What’s the matter?”

  “We’ve got lots of presents for you. But you’ll have to wait.”

  “Can’t wait until you’re back. Then we can all go home.”

  “Goodbye, baby.”

  Waiting for Timothee to come back on the line, Etienne rubs the stitching on his jacket. He should have stuffed the torn jacket into the garbage bin behind the arts building, where he discarded his torn trousers. “I’m out of money,” Etienne tells Timothee. “I want to buy a new jacket.”

  “Are you getting along with Luela?”

  Etienne looks over his shoulder at Luela, who is down the aisle pulling something off a low shelf. “She’s fussy.”

  Timothee laughs. “What else have you been doing?”

  “Went to a baseball game on the bluff with Chamberlain.”

  “Your mother needs a little more time. Another week or two to rest.”

  “Grandmother’s been writing. She wants me to come back to Montreal.”

  “I’ve got to hang up now, son. You behave for your mother.”

  “Why? You said yourself she’s doing good now.”

  The next morning, Luela is finishing another overnight shift when she receives a telephone call at the hotel. “Why didn’t you tell me he was sent home from the camp?” Timothee asks.

  “Figured Kath would.”

  “He’s got to be punished.”

  “I made him stay in his room. I locked his bicycle up in the shed. It’s pretty dry in the area where the roof doesn’t leak.”

  “Not good enough. Get rid of the bicycle.”

  “Don’t have the money to send it back to Montreal.”

  “Sell it.”

  “No kid in Woods Bluff can afford to buy it.”

  “Some kid in Halifax will want it.”

  “I suppose I could put up a notice at one of the bulletin boards near the hotel. Maybe at the YMCA or the library.”

  “Now you’re talking sense. Do it quickly.”

  A few days later, still in his pajamas, Etienne answers the front door at Luela’s house to find a man and a teenage boy standing on the front porch. The man looks like Mr. Wong, his social studies teacher, except he doesn’t speak with a heavy French accent. He speaks English like he’s from Britain. “We’ve come to see Luela Sebolt,” the man says.

  Etienne yells over his shoulder. But when Luela’s husband, Chamberlain, does not come out of the bedroom, he steps close to the man. “Aunt Luela’s not home from work yet. What do you want?”

  The boy hands Etienne a note he says was tacked up at the launderers. “The advertisement says the bicycle is for sale,” the boy says. “We’ve come to get it.”

  “Nobody’s selling a bicycle,” Etienne says, handing the note back.

  When the boy steps forward, Etienne is about to shut the door, but Chamberlain appears. He gently pushes Etienne aside and steps into the doorway. He looks over his shoulder toward the clock sitting on the television. “Come back this afternoon, maybe two or three to be safe,” Chamberlain says, keeping a hand on the sleeve of Etienne’s pajama shirt. “Luela will straighten this out.”

  When his mother first led him to the shed behind the Sebolt house—gabb
ing about a workbench and etchings in floor planks, Etienne barely looked inside. This afternoon, however, he visits every corner. He even bends down and peers into the dark area underneath the long worktable.

  As he feared, his bicycle is not there.

  “Damn her,” he says.

  He crosses the backyard feeling as if his swelling forehead is trying to tear itself from his face. Not once since arriving here in Halifax has he gotten the chance to ride his bicycle. He sits on the back steps, trying to calm down. But all he can think about is how to get back at Aunt Luela for selling his bicycle. He’ll slice the pom-poms off those patent leather boots she likes so much. He’ll hide her name badge one evening when she has to be at the Wales and London Hotel for an early morning shift. While she’s in the shower, he’ll slosh baby oil on that tacky hallway linoleum hoping she’ll slip and break both of those scrawny legs.

  Later, in the bedroom, knowing his aunt is afraid of his pet, Etienne lets the snake wrap itself around his wrist. But he hesitates before bringing the snake out to the living room where Luela and Chamberlain sit listening to a radio program. What if Luela is not the person who decided his bicycle had to be sold? What if his mother was the culprit? He sits down on the bed but is unable to be angry with her. Not with his brain invaded by the memory of her fighting back tears as she gave him a goodbye hug on the campus at Saint Richelieu. And did he overhear Luela tell her husband that his mother is seeing a doctor in Italy?

  The next morning, with Etienne still sulking in the bedroom and Chamberlain doing a roofing job in Saint Johns, Luela takes a seat in the living room, grateful for the peace. She likes to sit in her living room among the large sofa, the standing brass lamps, the thick worsted throw rugs, the gold-framed mirror, and the side tables. All were retrieved from the large storage room in the basement of the Wales and London. It helps to keep telling herself that the furniture shows very little fire and smoke damage.