A Plea for Constant Motion

by Paul Carlucci

Ramona has no response for this. She catches the driver studying her in the rear-view mirror. Her face remains stoic, even though inside she wilts with anger. Outside, Lusaka jumbles nonsensically past.

  The Association turns out to be a squat, dirty building near a landfill of a market called Soweto. A security guard with a baseball bat nods at the car and moves to open the russet gate, its hinges shrieking so loudly Ramona hears them through the closed windows of the vehicle. Elijah steps outside as soon as the car comes to a stop. He taps his cane around in the dust, stirring up little cyclones, and climbs a set of crumbling cement steps, all the while shouting, whether names, curses, or instructions, Ramona can’t be sure. The driver turns to stare at her, unimpressed. She sees herself reflected in his glasses, feeling diminished by her dark pigtails, her denim skirt and orange leggings. He opens the car door, unfolds his lanky frame into the morning, and trots up the steps behind Elijah. Ramona’s eyelids flutter uncontrollably. She follows.

  Three men are sitting on plastic chairs at the entrance of the building. Two of them are thin and dirty, wearing ill-fitting clothes; one focused on his sandaled feet and massaging tufts of grey hair that curl from his cheeks, the other smooth-faced and fidgety, a plastic fork between his grinding teeth. The first ignores the second, who carves rapid bursts of sign language out of the air between them. Elijah sniffs inquisitively, then addresses the third, who wears a black suit and tips a fedora away from his forehead, then laces his bejewelled fingers over his crotch and smiles, teeth big and white.

  “Preacher, very fine cologne you’re wearing. And how are you this morning?”

  “Very fine, Elijah,” the hipster preacher replies, voice deep and earthy. “God has made a beautiful day for this important meeting. And who is your friend?”

  “Ah, her, she is just from the Church of Canada. She is here to watch the car and maybe learn something about the Association. Her mother is having a hard time coming back to life, you understand. Culture shock. Meanwhile, the girl is bored and stares at birds in the garden all day.”

  “Ah, poor girl.”

  “Yes,” the driver butts in. “Very poor.”

  Elijah tells Ramona to wait outside and watch the car. He says the laneway outside the gate is full of ruffians, full of nasty little urchins with sand-blasted trousers and clumps of dust in their unkempt hair. They’re bold, he warns, gesturing at the compound entrance with his cane. They’ll peer through the spaces in the gate. If they notice the car unattended, they’ll climb over the wall, slicing their palms to ribbons on the broken glass set into the cemented top. They’ll storm the vehicle, strip it to the frame, and scamper off to the black market. He leans down, his suit puffing body odour, and Ramona notes the envelope full of cash in the inside pocket of his blazer. “So when they come, you stand in front of the car and shout for help. Understand?”

  He stands and turns, his cane striking the doorframe, and leads the way inside, the others following behind, including the driver. Ramona listens to their footsteps echoing off the floor inside. She hears Elijah soliloquizing in another language. The sun squeezes sweat from her brow and she inches into a small edge of shade running along the side of the building.

  Watch the car.

  Protect it.

  This is why they’ve travelled from Canada? To look after Elijah’s dubious wealth? And Ms. Bacon meanwhile writhes in her agonies, her vague contrition, leaving Ramona to manage the situation alone. It would be nice to travel back in time, before the era of Ernie, when she and her grandma made simple salads in their tight kitchen, the cellar rightfully an ominous place, not a sanctuary, and Ms. Bacon a weekly presence at most. Ramona imagines the front door of her time machine as more of a portal, like a hole in a mountainside.

  She decides no way will she protect Elijah’s car from a ghetto invasion. Definitely there are kids out there, shouting, laughing, speaking in rapid, fluid rhythms. Ramona waits for she doesn’t know how long, then leaves her shady post and walks quietly across the compound lot toward the gate. All over the ground are what look like squished bananas, flat and brown and rotten, but when she picks one up, it’s more like cracked wood, full of beads, like a rattle.

  There’s a gap of a couple inches between the door and the wall. She doesn’t want to get too close, imagining some kind of shrapnel spraying through the crack and tearing her to pieces, bits of jewellery stolen from missionaries and bundled into slingshots, the incisors of large jungle predators, the talons of sacrificial fowls. From a few feet away, she closes one eye and cranes her neck, gaining a vignette of the laneway. She shakes the rattle thing at her thigh and taps her dirty foot in the dust.

  On the other side, a soccer ball scatters past, trailing an orange cloud of sand. A boy dressed in a green school uniform chases after it, flashing through her viewfinder, his blurry limbs pumping. In the background, where her point of view is broader, two women in bright dresses pick through a mound of clothes piled on a tattered tarp. The word pub is written in red ink on a wall behind them. Another boy flashes through the foreground, this one shirtless in the filthy trousers of Elijah’s description. His laughter floats through the crack, over the wall. Ramona seizes on a small detail, dirt scuffed on his wrist, and instantly she’s reminded of Rodney Reynolds, his filthy church attire, his sign language fuck-you on the side of the road. She’s recreating the scene in her mind, every detail, the shovel and frozen dirt, when suddenly there’s an eyeball in the gap, a swath of cheek, saliva flashing between white teeth. The voice is flighty, almost mocking: “Hello, how-are-you, want-to-play?”

  She screams, high-pitched and girlish, backpedalling over the rutted parking lot, her sandals flipping off her feet. Just before she hits the ground, Ramona sees the eyeball blink and disappear, a burst of laughter from the other side. It takes a long second not to be afraid. To breathe. She studies the sky, looking for the tall trees with the blue flowers. But there aren’t any here, just twisting branches with those rattle things hanging from their tips. On the other side of the wall, the children are shaking them, cha-cha-cha, cha-cha-cha, cha-cha-cha.

  “What is the problem out here anyway?” Elijah’s cane taps against the cement steps. His voice is cracking with laughter. “Have they stolen the car?”

  Rolling onto her knees, Ramona watches Elijah and the driver amble down the steps, the former grinning and the latter looking sour. The lanky preacher with the fedora strides across the parking lot and looms over her, his suit jacket flapping open, the envelope full of money in his inner pocket. He plucks her by the wrists and lifts her to her feet. Everything is happening so fast. The deaf men stomp past, signing furiously, their faces chiselled with anger, and they fill the air with some vague implication of their imminent return. The driver slams the car door. Elijah too. The man in the fedora gives her a gentle shove toward the vehicle even as the engine turns over and a puff of smoke issues from the tailpipe. Behind her, the gate hinges squeal. Ramona runs for the car and is barely in the back seat when the driver slams it into reverse.

  Elijah looks self-satisfied, a placid grin beneath his blotchy eyes, cane rising between his knees like a flagpole. Ramona wants to ask about the business plans, about the money, but the car reverses at speed, throwing her into the back of the driver’s seat as it exits the compound. The preacher tips his fedora as they bounce past; he’s jazzy cool. Children scatter, shaking their rattle things — seeds, she realizes, they’re seeds — and the driver swings the back end around, ready to roar off over the ruts.

  There’s a crumpled thump against the trunk.

  The driver’s eyes leap to the rear-view mirror: wide, white, and panicked. He opens the door and hurries around the back of the vehicle.

  “Driver, what is it?” Elijah’s face collapses. His mouth hangs open. “What was that sound just now?”

  His fat fingers fumble with the door handle. He gets out, holding his cane like a weapon. Men rush over from the pu
b, beers in their hands. Shirtless, lean, shouting oi-oi-oi-oi. They gesture wildly, jab hard fingers at the driver, who kneels on the ground, feels around the neck of the child in search of a pulse. The deaf people slip away, hurrying along the outer compound wall, casting worried glances over their shoulders. The preacher, jazzy cool, has closed the gate. Ramona sees just his eye pressed up to the gap she was looking through before.

  Things happen quickly again. Elijah stands in the crowd, attracting dirty looks. The driver smiles as the kid in his hands coughs and spits and rolls away. But the drunken men will not be calmed. They turn their attention from the driver to Elijah. They shout ­oi-oi-oi-oi and one of them shoves him. A true panic passes over Elijah’s face now. Ramona is surprised to hear herself shouting, “Leave him alone, you jerks. Back off!” and she’s advancing, ignoring the other children, who target her with wicked eyes and churlish smiles. It’s finally her time to help Elijah, to protect him. Then Ms. Bacon will rise from her bed of despair, hug her and behave like a normal grown-up. She’ll learn all the birds by song. All the trees by name. She’ll never watch the car again, never sweep the floor or wash the dishes, and tomorrow they’ll drive to the airport. They’ll return to Canada and Rodney Reynolds.

  But there’s a sudden crack, like wood splintering, and it isn’t Elijah’s cane, not exactly, it’s a drunk’s protruding forearm, the bone inside, after Elijah has smashed his cane against it. Ramona ducks to avoid the follow-through. Elijah swings like Ernie hammering pebbles into the woods — a different drunk this time — and hits the man across the neck. The man shrieks, slaps his clavicle, hits the ground moaning. The driver is on his feet now, running for the vehicle. Elijah swings once more, the air swishing like a storm, and Ramona knows intuitively to get back inside the car, landing in her seat on the far side of the fracas just as Elijah closes his door and the driver slams the transmission into first, then second, then third all the way down the washboard road, women and men and children scattering in the car’s stony wake.

  Elijah sniffs and wipes his nose on the dirtied sleeve of his shirt. “Ramona?”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, okay. I am just seeing that you are in fact still here with us in the vehicle. Next time, you will have to keep a better watch on the car, isn’t it?”

  VI.

  It’s the night of Elijah’s birthday party, a fact that dawned on Ramona gradually throughout the day, first with the arrival of Preacher Jazzy Cool, who drove a van onto the property and started unloading instruments, guitars, drums, a bass and trumpet, and then with the steady arrivals of other men and women, all of them jazzy cool as well, wearing leopard print dresses and ’70s Afros, no bras, and neon high heels, the men with skinny black ties and white-framed sunglasses, tight black vests and cigarettes. They hauled the furniture out of the living room and set up in the backyard. They tied rainbow-coloured balloons to the armrests, very festive, and some of them kicked back and studied Ramona’s garden, smoking and drinking and flicking their butts into the rows. Elijah has been drinking all day. His eyes are red and wet. The onion stench of sweat rises from his suit like a biological weapons attack.

  Ramona hides from all this in her room, amid Ms. Bacon’s morgue of newspapers, their centrefolds spread over the floor. Layers of dust have built up on the windowsill, in the corners of the room, in the cracks of the newspapers. Ms. Bacon has been neglecting her personal hygiene, and Ramona can see dust encrusted around the contours of her earlobes, caked in the webs of wrinkles around her eyes.

  Tonight, sodden strands of thin hair stick to her forehead and cheeks. Beads of sweat slide down from her temples. But she’s cold, shivering and clutching her shoulders. Blankets are not enough to warm her up. Ramona unpacks all their clothes and spreads them out over the bed. She spoons Ms. Bacon, who clenches fetal, teeth chattering as she recounts the arrival of a locust on the bed frame earlier in the day.

  “Are we that close to the countryside, Ramona? Have you seen them in the fields? Do they assemble like horsemen? It’s a warning, you know. He’s warning me to stop. Stop, or forego His mercy.”

  Outside, the party is getting louder. The musicians shout at one another as they tune their instruments. Glass breaks in the backyard. There’s a trumpet blast and Ms. Bacon jolts upright, breaking Ramona’s embrace.

  “The problem,” she says, chin quaking, “is me, okay? Always me. And your dad. One time only your dad. One time — big time — me and your dad. Together.”

  The bed is soaked with perspiration. Ramona edges into a dry area by the window, draws the curtains back, and turns away from Ms. Bacon, from the drops of sweat trembling on the tip of her chin. Outside, they’re pissing in her lovely garden.

  Ramona launches out of bed, sandy newspapers crunching under her feet as she closes the distance to the bedroom door, tears it open, and slams it shut behind her. She hurtles down the hall, sandals whacking the floor.

  The band slinks into a mellow groove, trumpet blasts occasionally shattering the other instruments before falling off again. Cigarette smoke eddies around the ceiling. People dance and shuffle and drink in the living room, all of them in a circle around Elijah, who stabs his cane into the carpet, kicks his foot out, spins in a circle and twiddles his fingers. Everyone lilting and chanting: Cha-cha-cha-boom! Cha-cha-cha-boom!

  By the time she gets outside, Preacher Jazzy Cool is zipping up his fly. He’s alone out here, wearing sunglasses, his head tilted back to the full moon and a cigarette smouldering between his lips. There’s an angry borehole of piss in the soil, visible in the moonlight, and purple flower petals spin in the puddle.

  “Don’t you have any respect?” Ramona leans forward from her waist, arms akimbo. She blows her bangs out of her face. “I mean really?”

  “Oh,” he says with a slur. “Oh, look. It’s the Church of Canada girl. And she’s incensed, isn’t she? Yes, she is. And what’s wrong, girl? You don’t want I should piss in the garden?”

  The chant is building inside. Cha-cha-cha-boom! Cha-cha-cha-boom! Ramona can’t think over the din. She waves her finger scoldingly, like Ms. Bacon in Bible Study, but no words come out of her mouth.

  “Do you understand the music, Canada girl?” Preacher Jazzy Cool moves toward her like water dancing slowly. “Cha-cha-cha-boom! It’s powerful, isn’t it?”

  Ramona watches him slide into a chair, almost sits in the one next to him, then changes her mind. He was, after all, pissing in her garden, perverting her rain season. “I guess.” She winces at the child in her voice. “But I don’t know.”

  “Cha-cha-cha, little girl, was a civil disobedience movement in Zambia here. During independence. Cha-cha-cha-boom! Maybe some mzungu things were blown up, too, you know?” He claps his hands together, skin cracking like thunder. “Boom! Boom! Boom!”

  “Blown up? Why? What did we ever do?”

  He snorts and shakes his head. “Whatever it is, you are doing it still.”

  There’s movement in the window, and they both turn to look. Ramona’s blood tingles in her face. Ms. Bacon has thrown the curtains aside. She’s backlit by the lights inside, but the moon shines on her bare breasts and stomach, the spade of dark, tangled hair above her crotch, the scars across her thighs like branches of white lightning. Her eyes reflect the moon and shoot tractor beams at the preacher. Before Ramona has time to understand what she’s looking at, he’s out of his chair and back inside the house. Then Ms. Bacon slowly draws the curtains, a shy smile on her blotchy face.

  Ramona follows, but she’s too late. The bedroom door is locked. Everything is bedlam now. She beats her fists against the door, shouting at Ms. Bacon to let her in. The music withers and blooms. Its meandering rhythms rattle the house. Elijah floats down the hallway, taller women on either side of him, their breasts and hips afloat and slim, ebony arms draped around his neck. A twenty-dollar bill from Canada peeks from the top of one woman’s dress, a little green flash, the
crown of the Queen.

  Cane held limply in his right hand, Elijah is monstrously drunk, bouncing between these two women like a soccer ball passed between children. “But what is all this banging in my hallway, enh? It is Ramona, isn’t it? You know, child, that the other church people stay in their rooms during my parties, isn’t it? They don’t make nuisances of themselves like you, banging on doors and shouting over my music.”

  He lashes out, his fat little body suddenly coarse with strength, and strikes her in the ribs with his cane, hard enough to knock it from his grasp and send it clattering down the hallway, into the gloom. She crumbles, her back against the door and hands clasping her ribs, which throb and swell and splinter with pain. But Elijah and his women have already forgotten her. They cavort down the hallway, limbs stroking and entangled.

  There are tears in Ramona’s eyes and she lets them flow, her sobs muffled by the crashing music and raucous drinking. What if Rodney appeared with tiger balm and glow sticks? What if the two of them eloped in the garden, orange peels and purple flowers crushed beneath their feet? What if Grandma could still ride her bicycle, parked it in the living room, the kickstand thrumming, and she crouched down to whisper in Ramona’s ear: “Do you want to watch Fraggle Rock?” What if Mom were still alive and Ms. Bacon just a churchy friend who got too drunk at birthday parties? What if Elijah apologized, returned the money to the church, and begged to start over?

  When her tears dry up, Ramona’s alone. The house has fallen dark and silent, only the musty stink of beer and cigarette smoke left. She doesn’t hear Preacher Jazzy Cool open the bedroom door, doesn’t feel his presence beside her as he crouches. She only notices him when he rasps in her ear, his voice a dehydration of alcohol and cigarettes, and on his breath the faint odour of something else, something familiar, even though she’s never smelled it before.

  “She has malaria, you know. Very rare this time of year in Lusaka, but not impossible. Anyway, no big deal if you take her to the hospital when the sun comes up, okay? I got her through the worst of the first wave.” He whistles, nods, straightens up and saunters down the hallway to the front door. “Shit,” he calls out. “Look at this shit right over here. Elijah forgot his cane in the hallway. Always a first time, isn’t it?”