Then I took Gene and a blanket out to the back yard. After a few minutes, I realised that Cecil had been right about the dryness. I would have to buy some lubricant tomorrow.
I’d expected an argument about the rubbers, but Gene never said a thing. When I pulled it out of my jeans pocket, he just put it on and then pulled me on top of him. Like Cayaba men had modernised while I wasn’t paying attention.
We lay on the blanket and humped each other silly by the light of the stars and the fireflies. If my little boy turned out to be sick, that would be another challenge to take on. But right then, lying naked in the outdoors with my head on a man’s chest and my nipples crinkling in the breeze, life was good.
And busy. Only a few minutes later, I waved Gene goodbye, then put myself, Agway, and our overnight bags into the car. My plan worked like a charm; Agway didn’t really wake up until I took him into the bright lights of the clinic waiting room.
“OKAY. I have the results,” said Evelyn. I was sitting in her office. Agway was on the floor, playing with the bead maze she kept in there.
I had fretted all night on the hard hospital bed, watching Agway sleep with electrodes attached to his scalp. “What’s wrong with him?”
She frowned. “We couldn’t find any malformations in his sinuses or anything that would cause obstructive sleep apnea.”
“So he’s all right?” I crossed the two joined fingers.
“I don’t know.”
“How you mean?”
“Obstructive sleep apnea is the most common kind. Would have been fairly easy to treat. So now we are looking at whether it might be central sleep apnea.”
“Which is what?”
“Obstructive sleep apnea is mechanical. Something physical literally obstructs the normal pattern of breathing, causing the patient’s muscles to relax before he or she can inhale properly. The obstruction could be in the sinuses. Being overweight can cause it too. Agway doesn’t have any of that. He’s plump, but not exceedingly so.”
“The body fat keeps him warm in the ocean.”
She looked uncomfortable.
I shrugged. “So, what about the other kind of apnea?”
“The central kind? It’s neurological. The right message isn’t getting from the brain to the muscles that make breathing work. The patient inhales all right, but has trouble exhaling. Once Agway began to dream, he would stop breathing from time to time, for up to 110 seconds. He would inhale, but he wouldn’t exhale.”
“So, central sleep apnea, then.” I was frightened.
“You would think so, yes. But he has some anomalies.”
Worse and worse. “How you mean?”
She leaned forward. “His heart rate should have been going up when he stopped breathing. Instead, it went down. He displayed vasoconstriction in his extremities. The blood flow to the core of his body increased. None of those things is consistent with either kind of sleep apnea.”
Oh, God. Agway was really sick. “What’s wrong with him?”
Now Evelyn looked very upset. “I only know of one phenomenon which produces that reaction in humans.”
I sat up straight, squared my shoulders. “Tell me.”
For a few long seconds, she didn’t. Then she said: “Bradycardia, peripheral vasoconstriction, blood shift; facial cooling triggers it. Now, Calamity, I don’t want you to make too much of this, okay?”
“Just tell me!”
“It’s how mammals respond to being submerged in water. It’s called mammalian diving reflex,” she said unhappily. “You see it in seals, dolphins, whales, otters. But human beings can do it too.”
I was on my feet before I knew it. I barely heard the chair crashing to the floor. Agway, startled, looked up to see what I was doing. “You see, you see!” I crowed. “I’m right! He is a sea child!”
Evelyn shook her head firmly. “You have to stop saying that! I have to walk careful right now, Calamity. Samuel’s coming under fire for signing that agreement with the FFWD. I can’t be associated with anything or anyone irregular.”
“Irregular. I see.”
“Besides, you ever think there might be another explanation? You found that child half-drowned. You ever stop to think what a nightmare that was for him?”
“Well, yes, but I—”
“You told me he cries when he sleeps! You ever think he might be having nightmares? Enh? Nightmares about drowning?”
Oh, lord. I hadn’t thought that. He’d been snagged in seaweed, at the mercy of the waves. Even a sea child can drown.
“He dreams he’s drowning again, and mammalian diving reflex kicks in, just like it kicked in when he fell into the water during the storm. It doesn’t need cold water, you know. Experienced divers can initiate it with the right kind of breathing.”
Agway had been looking from one to the other of us as we argued. He had no idea what all this palaver was about; he just knew that the adults were fighting. “We’re scaring him,” I told Evelyn.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s not just you.”
“The thing is, it’s a lovely idea that he’s some kind of marine human, but if the wrong people hear you going on about it, all of us stand to lose. You, me, Samuel. I could be forbidden from practising medicine. You could lose Agway. And Samuel—well, he might lose his job anyway.” Worry had made her features haggard.
I nodded. “All right. I’ll act normal.”
“Thank you.” She glanced at the clock on her wall and stood up. “I have to go on rounds now.”
“Agway and I can go?”
“Yes. Near as I can tell, he’s healthy. Physically, anyway. Emotionally, I’m not so sure. I’m going to set up an appointment here at the hospital, for a child psychologist to assess him.”
“I can look after him!”
“I don’t doubt that. But I should have done this from the start. I’m ashamed of myself that I waited so long.” She gave me a little smile. “Don’t worry. This is what’s best for Agway.”
In the doorway, she stopped and turned back. “And since we’re talking about what’s best for Agway, I want to do something about those skin patches. Should be an easy day surgery. Quick laser treatment, then he’s back home to you. I’ve scheduled it for this Thursday.”
CAMITY!” PIPED AGWAY. WE WERE INSIDE the cashew grove. “Look!” He held up his little bucket to show me. It was full of fat, grey cashew seeds. And a rockstone or two, and his shorts and wee-wee damp diaper that he’d discarded. He still couldn’t be convinced to keep much clothing on. His little boy’s totie, brown and perfect as a mushroom, was all exposed. Well, we had a little time before I had to civilise him enough to enter the real world. Let him enjoy it. I smiled.
“What you bring for me, baby?”
“Ka-soos,” he said proudly. The bandages at his knees were coming loose again. I’d have to replace the dressings soon. But he seemed to be healing fine from the surgery.
“That’s right, baby; cashews. Thank you.” Me, I wasn’t doing as well as Agway. Kept asking myself if I should have let
Evelyn order the surgery, superficial as it was. But I couldn’t have stopped her. I wasn’t Agway’s legal guardian yet.
He was good at tearing the grey nut free of the fruit, but he wasn’t tidy at it. From fingertips to elbows, he was smeared in red and yellow flecks of cashew fruit. He must have been eating them, too; fruit mush was all around his mouth, which was gritty with dirt where he’d wiped his hands against it. At least his hair was finally neat and trim. He’d given me such a fight when I tried to chop off that rats’ nest! Eventually I had just done it in his sleep. He’d been furious when he woke up. But I had given him one of the chopped-off locks; the one that had the shell tied into it that he most liked to rub between his fingers. He kept it in his dresser drawer now; whenever he needed comforting, he got it and held it and worried away at the shell between his fingers.
I took his bucket and emptied it into my bigger one. I pulled out the rockstones and tos
sed his shorts and diaper into the wheelbarrow. I handed him his bucket back. “You going to get some more for Mamma?”
“No.” He squatted and began trying to jam the mouth of the bucket into the gravelly soil.
“What you going to do, then?” I rolled the wheelbarrow to the foot of the next nearest tree. Plenty of freshly fallen nuts there. I bent, began twisting the grey pericarps free from the red, pear-shaped flesh of the fruit, tossing the nuts into the wheelbarrow and the fruit onto the growing pile of red-yellow mush that oozed happily in the clearing. The flies had already gathered for the banquet. The smell of fermented cashew juice and the buzzing blue-bottle flashes of blue from the flies made the warm morning air sleepy.
Agway stood, bowlegged, the battered red bucket at his feet. He frowned gravely at me. He still stood a little too wide-legged. But partly that was the cast on his leg. Once it was off, he’d be able to walk normally. He’d fit in just fine. “Want to play with the…” he told me, making a liquid noise that I couldn’t follow.
“Play with what, baby?”
He pointed with a chubby finger. I looked. Sir Grandad was in the tree above me, staring curiously down at us. “That’s a mongoose,” I told Agway. “What you called it?”
He said the word again. I wondered what it was the word for; what in his old watery home looked like a mongoose. I tried to imitate him.
“No” He chuckled, holding his little round belly.
I laughed and said it again.
“No! No!” He looked irritated this time. “Stop! Stop talking like me!”
The buzz of flies around the clotted remains of the fruit suddenly seemed less pleasant. I held my hand out for Agway’s. “Come. We have to change your dressings.” It was almost time for Ifeoma to come by, anyway. I hoped she’d found St. Julian mangoes in the market. Was the season for them.
Agway toddled over to me, put his hand in mine. I grabbed up his discarded clothes on the way out. I left the wheelbarrow for now.
He stumbled. I was walking too quickly for him. The child had just had surgery to his legs. I slowed down. “You want a Popsicle when we get to the house?”
He frowned up at me, confused. “Popsicle,” I told him. “Remember? It’s cold and sweet and you eat it?”
“No. Want stimps,” he informed me.
“What a way you own-way today! Mr. Mckinley didn’t come yet. How about some breadfruit? With butter?”
He nodded. “Beddfooot.” Child after my own heart.
A wash of heat soaked me. “Hold on a minute, Agway.” I stood to let the hot flash pass. No itching fingers this time. Nothing popped out of the air. More and more, I was having just the regular hot flashes. The after-chill came on, but in the heat of the day, it was almost a pleasant thing. If the manifestations had stopped, I could handle this menopause business. I took Agway’s hand again. “Come. Almost time for Dora the Explorer.”
“MUMMY! YOU HOME?”
Uh-oh. In only three words from her, I could name that tone. Ifeoma was on the warpath.
She shoved the front door open before I could get to it. Right in the entranceway, she put down the plastic shopping bags she was carrying. What the hell was her problem?
“Thank you,” I said prettily, picking up the bags. “And don’t worry if you couldn’t find any smoked herring. I’m sure that everything you brought is fine.” First step: try harmless disarmament.
She glared and walked past me into the living room. She pulled Agway away from the bookcase he’d started climbing in the few seconds I hadn’t had my eye on him. She put him on her hip. “What’s your problem with Hector? Eh? Why you told Stanley not to do his science fair project with him?”
I put down the bags and took Agway away from her. “I will help Stanley with his project! You don’t let me spend enough time with him as it is.” If step one fails: self-defense.
Then I couldn’t resist saying: “Besides, Hector’s not a nice person.”
She sucked her teeth. “Bullshit, he’s not nice.”
I blinked. She hardly ever swore. She picked up the bags. I turned the television on for Agway and followed Ife into the kitchen.
As she unpacked the produce onto the kitchen counter, she said, “I have plenty of opportunity to see what Hector is like. I’m the one who hired him for Caroline.”
“You hired him? For that politician woman? She trust you with a job like that?”
She took a dozen eggs out of a bag and very carefully set the box down. She growled, “You even know what it is I do?”
“How you mean? You work the front desk at the Tamany.”
She sighed. “Not any more. I told you that a couple weeks ago.”
“You didn’t tell me you left! I thought you were doing the other thing in the evenings, or something! That little piece of work is enough to support you and Stanley? Especially now that Clifton gone?” Step three: destabilize.
“You right, I didn’t tell you. Didn’t want to give you more ammunition against me. And what it is I do in Caroline’s office?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Answering phones and so.”
“I am the junior research assistant for the leader of this country’s opposition party. They made me full-time last week.”
“What?”
“You even have any idea why I want to work for Caroline Sookdeo-Grant? Enh? When I joined the 4-H club in high school, you laughed at me. When I organized that letter campaign in ’02 to protest the death penalty, you told me I was wasting my time. Nothing I do is good enough for you. I don’t think you ever had a word of praise for me yet.”
I think I actually rocked back on my heels with the shock of that one. Who had taught her step three?
She started unpacking one of the bags. “This nonsense about Hector is really because he not interested in you, nuh true? It don’t have anything to do with Stanley’s project.”
Shame heated up my face. I covered quickly: “Chuh. I wouldn’t want Hector if he was the last man on earth. Next thing I know, he go and leave me for some man.”
She grimaced. “God, that attitude is so backward.”
“You need to watch yourself with me, Ife. I not in a mood to hear no stupidness today.”
“You know what your problem is? You jealous.”
I guffawed. She wanted to play rough, I would unleash step four on her ass: berserker rage. “Me, jealous? Of what? Tell me, nuh? Your flour sack dresses and your bad diet? Your marriage that dying on you? Maybe I jealous that the two-three men in your life more interested in each other than you? Or that your own mother could thief a man right out from under your twenty-one-year-old nose? What I have to be jealous of, Ife? Enh?”
To my astonishment she surged right over me with: “You give yourself as a gift to your best friend one day, and you still can’t forgive him for saying ‘no thank you.’”
She dare to talk to me that way? Meek little Ife? She went on, “Nearly forty years now you chewing on that grudge like a wad of old gum that have all the taste suck out of it.”
“And who it is still whining about how her mother didn’t buy her the right colour dolly when she was nine?”
No reaction from her. Ife was as cool as running water, and as impossible to make a mark in. I’d never seen her like this before. I didn’t have a step five. Stammering, I improvised: “I still don’t hear what I have to be so jealous of.”
“Anybody Daddy have in his life, Mummy! You ever watch at yourself? The way you carry on? You look at Orso like you starving and he hoarding all the food.”
I gaped at her, completely off my stride.
“Tell me,” she said, “when exactly it is you got stuck? ’Cause it seem like you reached a certain place in your life, and you never managed to move on from there.”
I was trembling. The roaring in my ears was too loud to let me think up a comeback.
“You know what the sad thing is?” she said. “You could have been part of Daddy’s life any time you wanted. But if you couldn�
�t have him all to yourself, you didn’t want nobody else to have him, neither. Wouldn’t even let his own daughter get to know him.”
I found my voice. “I did that to protect you!”
“The same way so you protecting Agway? By shutting him away from everyone?”
“The child is an orphan! He need somebody to look out for him. You didn’t need Michael. You had me.”
She kissed her teeth. “If you looking out for Agway so good, why you not finding out what language he speak? Enh? You quick to go and research what steel make of, but you can’t trace down one language? Why you not trying to learn what Agway saying to you? Stanley spend couple-three hours with the boy, and already he could talk a few words to Agway. Like you frighten?”
“Your rass. Frighten of what? What a three-year-old boy could say to frighten me?”
“He could tell you something about himself and where he came from. He could tell you what really happened to him. He could tell you his name, Mummy.”
I was breathing in little gasps. “He have a name! I give him a perfectly good name!”
“Make me wonder it’s who really wanted a black dolly to dress up and parade around and keep in a box.”
My hand actually twitched towards her face to give it a good slap. I killed the impulse, but Ife still saw. She didn’t even flinch, and she didn’t back down. She just drew herself up tall and looked me in my face.
I swallowed. “Leave my house,” I whispered.
“Not until I tell you this.” Gently, she set down the tin of salmon she’d been about to put in the pantry. “I am ashamed of you. You hear me good? Ashamed.”
As she was leaving, she stopped in the kitchen doorway and looked back at me. I couldn’t meet her eyes. “Every good deed you do have a price attached,” she said.
AGWAY WAS FRACTIOUS ALL EVENING. I had hell to pay trying to keep his hands from his dressings. Looked like he’d reached that itchy stage they’d warned me about at the hospital. Nothing to do but put on the ointment they’d given me and give him some painkiller. That seemed to help the discomfort a little, but Christ, he was irritable! Eventually I just picked him up and paced back and forth across the living room with him, like I had done when Ife was teething. I kept the tv on just to distract him. I think it was more to distract me. The memories of Ife’s words to me before she left were churning and sour in my gut. Well, if life give you lemons, suck them, I suppose. People had said worse to me before, when I was a teenage mother. I’d survived.
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