Patsy

by Patsy (retail) (epub)

  Patsy looks at her friend, who is now so accustomed to middle-class life that she no longer has ambition or hunger, a woman who sacrifices her needs for her husband. Aloud Patsy says, “You’re a woman wid a mind of yuh own. There mus’ be somet’ing to be said about dat too, isn’t there?”

  Cicely’s scowl deepens. “You’re di one applying for a job, not me.”

  “You were always pretty enough, pleasant enough to get exactly what yuh want. Now yuh have a husband wid enough money to mek yuh quit night school an’ forget about nursing school jus’ to sit at home an’ do aerobics. Don’t question my ambition when you no longer have any.”

  Cicely’s eyes and mouth go wide with surprise. “How dare you say—”

  “You know it’s di truth, Cicely. Earlier when ah fainted in di street, ah saw how yuh come alive, doing somet’ing yuh always dreamed of doing. Yuh nurse me back to life. You’d really mek a good nurse one day. Are you really at peace wid yuhself being married to a man wid money without none of yuh own? Living his dreams wid no regard fah yours? Mabley might not have had di best job in di world opening har legs fah men, but one t’ing she had was hustle.”

  “Don’t bring my mother out di grave fah dis convah-sation,” Cicely hisses. “My mother had to literally beg my father on bended knees to give har a room in di big house where his wife had di key. I, on di other hand, am di wife. Di queen ah di castle. In fact, I’m more than a wife. I’m his prize. He takes me to dinners and galas, because him know he’d get more respect wid a beautiful wife who look white, even from di most prejudiced among di white people him call friends. As long as ah don’t open my mouth. My mother used to tell me dat my looks can take me nuff places—that it’s a pass. A visa through life. Mabley would be proud.”

  “Is dat yuh only accomplishment? To be di trophy wife?” Patsy asks.

  “Sometimes we ’ave to do t’ings we don’t like, to get what we want,” Cicely says with resolve. “An’ besides, ah got a beautiful son out of it. Dat is now my ambition.”

  Before Patsy can say anything more inside the cold job agency office, the girl returns with coffee in hand and sits. “So have you made up your mind?” she asks Patsy.

  “I used to be good at maths,” Patsy says to the girl, her eyes on Cicely. Cicely looks away and braces her shoulders.

  “Pardon?” The girl swings her chair around, her long legs almost bumping Patsy’s.

  “When yuh asked me what ah was good at earlier? It was maths. Dey called me a prodigy once—back when ah was in school.” Patsy laughs now, disappointment sinking in her gut.

  “Uhm . . . that’s nice,” the girl says with mild interest, clasping her hands around her steaming coffee cup. “As I mentioned earlier, regardless of your background, right now women like yourself are in demand for domestic work. This nanny position would be a great fit.”

  “Fine,” Patsy says.

  The girl simply smiles and proceeds with Patsy’s job application.

  After they are done, the girl offers Patsy and Cicely stationery with the Ray of Hope logo scribbled on it. “Tell your friends about us!” she says, waving them goodbye. Cicely thanks her. At the door, Cicely surprises Patsy by putting a hand on the small of Patsy’s back and lets her go first. Something about this gesture tempers Patsy’s annoyance. Finally they begin to talk, their pleasant chatter a bit more strained than before.

  INSTEAD OF THE RED PEAS SOUP, CHICKEN FOOT SOUP, OR COW foot soup that any Jamaican matriarch worth her salt cooks every Saturday evening, Cicely decides to make pumpkin soup with a touch of cinnamon. “Marcus’s favorite.” The whole house smells of cinnamon. Shamar is upstairs practicing on his violin. Patsy hears the sharp halt of a tune followed by the slow beginning of a new melody. Cicely talks to Patsy over the sound. “Now dat yuh know how to get around Brooklyn, yuh can go to interviews when di time comes.” Her voice is cheerful. “You don’t have to step one foot into Manhattan.”

  “Can’t wait,” Patsy says, her mind still on their exchange at the agency. “Ah want to use yuh phone.”

  Cicely pauses her food preparation. Slowly, she lowers the dish towel.

  “I’ve been meaning to call Tru,” Patsy responds before Cicely says anything.

  Cicely nods, though something shades her face as if someone suddenly closed the drapes, blocking the evening sunset flaming above the trees. “I know,” Cicely says, her voice placid. She waves off Patsy. “You can use di study, since Marcus isn’t here. Close di door.”

  In the study, Patsy picks up the telephone. She begins to dial the numbers on the calling card Cicely bought her when she first arrived, followed by the 1-876 country code. But she hangs up as soon as she’s prompted to dial the other numbers. Resting her elbows on the oblong mahogany desk that still smells like freshly cut wood, she buries her face in her palms. She’s not ready. She stares up at the light that comes from the large windows facing the tree-lined street. Marcus’s books on real estate are stacked neatly on a small shelf. Though Patsy is uncomfortable sitting here in his study—in his leather chair where he probably leans back, feet propped on the desk, to either admire his wing-tip shoes or smoke those Cuban cigars Cicely says he’s crazy about—it’s even more uncomfortable sitting with Cicely’s words. “You’re a mother. There mus’ be somet’ing to be said about dat too, isn’t there?”

  Patsy takes a deep breath and picks up the phone again. Methodically she punches the numbers, still holding her breath as if she’s about to be submerged underwater as she waits for someone to pick up. It feels like a lifetime waiting. A lifetime of trying to decide whether to hang up on the fifth or sixth ring.

  “Hello?” someone finally says. It sounds to Patsy like a child—one of Roy’s sons.

  “Yes, good evening,” Patsy replies. “I’m calling to speak to Tru. Is she around?”

  “Who may I ask is calling?” the boy asks in the manner of a well-trained child. Patsy realizes that she has never taught Tru to answer the phone this way. Never had a reason to, since they didn’t receive many phone calls. “It’s—it’s Tru’s mother,” Patsy says.

  There is a long pause after her response, as if the boy himself has been awaiting the call and, finally when he gets it, has nothing to say. Maybe his mother has told him about Patsy. Boys are protective of their mothers.

  “He-hello? You there?” Patsy says, guilt shaking her voice.

  “Yes, miss,” the boy replies. “Tru ’roun di back washing clothes wid Mama.”

  “Tell har dat har mother want to talk to her.”

  “Please hold,” he says, sounding like a secretary. Patsy cannot help but smile at this.

  “Okay, I will,” she says, relieved.

  What she really wants to say is, Yes, I will try. For, as the boy leaves to call Tru, Patsy feels herself losing courage. Hearing Tru’s voice will only make it harder, she thinks. “When yuh coming back?” Tru will ask—the inevitable question that Patsy has been dreading. Paralyzed with the grief and fear of uttering yet another lie, she realizes this is the question that has kept her from calling until today. “Soon, soon. I’ll be back.” That is all she needs to say. But those words might choke her.

  As she waits on Tru, she stares at the high ceiling of the study, feeling small and helpless. Outside, leaves tremble on tree limbs as though fighting to keep a season that has already moved on. The hand holding the telephone shakes. Suddenly there is a burst of sound on the other end. A squeal erupts from a distance, growing louder. When it is close, becoming panting breaths and footsteps, Patsy quickly lowers the phone with a soft click. “I’m sorry,” she says aloud, hoping her apology will carry over the dying autumn landscape across the brooding ocean.

  WHEN PATSY EXITS THE STUDY, HER THOUGHTS ARE INTERRUPTED by the sharp halt of Shamar’s instrument. “Wrong key!” Cicely shouts, hurrying to the banister with an empty plate and craning her neck toward the staircase in the foyer so that her son can hear her. “And what did Mr. Ferguson teach you about holding your notes? Start again!�
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  Cicely only speaks to her son in standard English, never allowing herself to slip into their dialect whenever he’s around. From the brief silence that follows Cicely’s reprimand comes a beautiful melody. It’s as though all Shamar’s emotions have left him and entered the playing of his violin.

  “You’re a mother. There mus’ be somet’ing to be said about dat too, isn’t there? Is there?” Cicely’s question still haunts Patsy and has built a wall between them. With Patsy coming to America, living completely separate lives was never supposed to be their fate. A clear memory comes to Patsy, of a bright day in high school when she and Cicely went off by themselves to have lunch under the poinciana tree in the schoolyard. Cicely often shared her lunch with Patsy, who had no money to buy food. Mama G was out of work and had no intention of finding another job. Cutting her corned-beef sandwich into a perfect line down the middle, Cicely said, “I want us to always be together. No matter what. We can run away together after graduation, find somewhere to live. Jus’ me an’ you.”

  Cicely was the one person who had accepted everything about her. But now Patsy senses Cicely’s withdrawal, her quiet judgment. Cicely kept her child a secret, but every day she’s pouring herself into him. Patsy has left hers on the other side of the ocean.

  Patsy stands at the entrance of the kitchen and watches her best friend. Cicely is at the sink, one slipperless foot resting on the inside of the opposite leg, the slipper abandoned next to it. In this moment, she becomes the common girl from Pennyfield who daydreamed constantly, her wistfulness adding sparkle to her eyes that used to flash with turquoise under hooded eyelids. She rolls her narrow shoulders and arches her back as if to rise out of herself, her loosened hair touching the middle of her spine. But just as quickly she hunches again, like a flower unable to blossom. Patsy softens, taking in Cicely’s shapely figure, which Cicely jokingly calls “fat,” emphasized in the plain blue housedress. Then she thinks of how soft and cool her skin will be despite the heat from the oven. The desire to touch her surges through Patsy. She thinks of the chicken feathers and suddenly there’s an ache between her legs. Cicely’s politeness around her is more than Patsy can bear. She wants to undress her, massage her rigid body until it loosens, arouse that wild passion they once had, tell her that it’s okay now to be free.

  When Cicely catches her staring she pauses, startled, flushing pink when she sees in Patsy’s eyes what Patsy wants her to see. Her demeanor changes, the peaceful spirit pulling back like receding waves on a shore. Patsy senses her friend fumbling to regain composure, to shut her out. “Ah can use some help,” she says, her voice as mellow as Shamar’s music.

  Patsy moves to wash her hands and assist Cicely with a heavy cast-iron pot she puts inside the oven. Cicely doesn’t ask about the phone call. It’s as if she already knows not to. She directs Patsy, telling her where to find certain ingredients and kitchenware. In comfortable silence, they sway and hum over their individual tasks—Cicely bending to take a roasted pumpkin from the oven to gut it, and Patsy using a mortar—the one thing Cicely preserved of her Caribbean identity—to pound garlic, raw onions, pepper, and other spices.

  Patsy immediately loses herself in the mindless rhythmic thrust of the wooden pestle inside the smooth concave surface of the bowl. She feels useful, assured, for what else is she good at? Or has a firm grasp on in this moment? The flavors run free beneath the curve of Patsy’s wet fingers, and the alluring scents rise into her nostrils and bring forth tears. Up and down, around and around, she grinds on the bed of spices as if deepening the sloping bowl with the hard roundness of the pestle. She presses her weight against the edge of the counter, the aroma, the violin music, and the things dredged from her soul swaying her like a willow over her grinding. There’s no justification for the way the simple movement carries her, frees her, as the ingredients and her emotions liquefy. A hand grazes her shoulder. Pulls her up against feminine softness. Next thing she knows, Cicely is holding her from behind, her hands clasped below her belly, just under the hidden scar. With a deep guttural moan that sounds as though she has finally pushed life out of a contracting womb, Patsy turns and flings her arms around her friend, burrowing her wet face into the warm oblivion of Cicely’s neck.

  CICELY, PATSY, AND SHAMAR EAT DINNER TOGETHER. MARCUS called and said he’ll be working late. His absence from the dinner table doesn’t seem to bother Cicely, though Patsy suspects that a man like that has other women he wines and dines somewhere else. It’s just an inkling she has, wondering if Cicely ever questions it too. Shamar talks a lot more when his father isn’t around. He engages Patsy about school and music. He loves music, says he wants to be a musician when he grows up. “Like Miles Davis!” he says.

  “Who?” Patsy asks.

  “Miles Davis. He’s a famous jazz musician,” he says to Patsy. “He played the trumpet.”

  “Oh, I see!”

  “Shamar wants to play the trumpet,” Cicely explains. “But his father thinks the violin is more cultured. He thinks it’s important that Shamar reads and plays classical music.”

  “I hate the violin.” The boy pouts. “They never give us popular music.”

  “Dat nuh sound like fun a’tall,” Patsy tells him.

  The boy’s face cracks into a smile, as if he’s glad that a grown-up is finally on his side. When he smiles, he looks exactly like Cicely. Patsy steals glances at her friend as she tells the little boy stories about his mother, their childhood. The little boy laughs, his curious, astonished gaze landing on his mother as she too laughs, bringing her head far back to reveal that sweet spot at the base of her throat, her face flushing pink. How odd her language must sound to him, pouring out of her, loud and free, echoing inside the old house and clashing with its high ceilings with chandeliers, its hushed rooms and champagne-colored drapes. The boy repeats those words—”Yuh don’t say! But yuh see me dying trial! Jeezum!” as if to commit them to memory like he does Spanish and Mandarin at his private school.

  Cicely is miraculously young again with the memory of that other life. Suddenly the child-Cicely boldly sucks her teeth. “Covah yuh ears, Shamar, an’ don’t listen to dis one!”

  Her laughter, to Patsy’s delight, is openly vulgar, banging on the dark oak doors and sweeping through each room, boisterous and defiant. A true Pennyfield woman, though more exotic. She hurls herself forward to slap Patsy playfully on the arm. “Stop it! Talk di truth!”

  And this spurs Patsy to make her laugh more, tickling her with stories the way she did with those chicken feathers. When Cicely gets up from the dining table for a glass of water (she has been laughing so hard!), she stumbles merrily to the kitchen and pauses at the entrance to catch her breath, her blue satin maxidress emphasizing her full breasts and shapely figure, hugging her quivering frame. The boy’s eyes follow his mother, enamored, his smile like rays of sunlight. Even the diamond earrings in her earlobes glint as the boy’s eyes seem to retain his mother’s laughing face.

  A door opens and closes softly.

  A shadow crosses Cicely’s face. Her hands fall limply at her sides, her bangles clinking softly like chimes in a gentle breeze. Marcus enters from the veil of shadow and Patsy’s smile transforms, though not as immediately as Cicely’s. No longer is Cicely a woman full of life and ease with herself—a woman who, just seconds ago, threw her head back until it trembled proudly on the stalk of her neck—but a woman reassembling the image in the tall mirror. Cicely’s eyes drop to her husband’s feet. Shamar excuses himself quietly—so quietly that Patsy doesn’t notice until she hears the soft click of his bedroom door. Patsy remains seated at the table, taking slow, measured breaths to calm the rage inside her. It clogs her throat, hardening like phlegm. Cicely tugs at her right earlobe, like a child who knows she’s about to be scolded.

  10

  SHE WAITS BY THE PHONE. HER MOTHER MIGHT CALL AGAIN. SHE sits still, though every cell inside her body is active. Be a good girl. Marva puts a wicker chair by the telephone in the hallway and pl
aces three thick phone books on it for Tru to sit on so that she can reach the receiver. She’s told to use the bathroom if she must, but is determined to hold her pee with all the strength she can muster. She’s told she can have a scoop of ice cream after dinner before her brothers devour the whole bucket. She’s told she needs to go to bed early for school the next day. She’s told a lot of things, but the one thing that matters is the ring that will bring forth the sound of her mother’s voice. She listens to her brothers and father in the living room watching kung fu movies.

  Marva looks out from the kitchen at Tru. “Yuh all right, dear?”

  “Yes, miss,” Tru replies.

  “Need a cup a wata?” Marva asks.

  Tru is thirsty, but her bladder can take no more water. What if she goes to the bathroom and misses the call? She doesn’t want anyone talking to her mother first. “No, thank you.”

  Marva continues to stand there in the faint light that spills into the hallway from the kitchen. Tru refuses to meet her inquisitive gaze, focusing on the mosquito bite on her leg. “If you need anything, let me know,” Marva finally says after what seems like a long time standing there. “Is almost yuh bedtime.”