Patsy

by Patsy (retail) (epub)

  There was no one to disturb them—at least no one they could see.

  “THOUGHT YOU’D NEVER COME BACK UPSTAIRS.”

  Cicely jumps at the sound of Marcus’s voice inside the living room. When she turns, she sees him sitting on the white couch, his arms slung over the back, one slippered foot resting on the knee of his other leg. His long burgundy robe is open to reveal his soft belly. His eyes reflect the light of the chandelier, which also creates a sheen on the family photographs on the mantel. When they met, it was his eyes that drew her to him, eyes that reminded her of a stranger she had never met; a stranger her mother kept from her, only telling her that she has his eyes. She had heard them talking. “She’s yuh dawta. Jus’ wake har up an’ look at her eyes. Blue an’ green jus like yours.” But the stranger was never that curious. He stayed inside her mother’s bedroom, his big shoes at the door. They were leather wing-tip shoes—polished and shined. Cicely knew because she crept out of the makeshift bed on the living room sofa where her mother had tucked her in (only when the man came over) and picked one up. She ran her finger along the surface of the shoes. They had no dust on them and the soles looked like they’d never touched ground, though Pennyfield had no paved roads. He came in a nice government vehicle. His blazer, hung on a chair at their small dining table, had gold buttons, intricate stitches, and a J embroidered on the collar. It was wide enough to span the width of his broad shoulders. “Yuh have to stop wid dat foolishness, Mabley,” the man hissed from behind the red curtain of Mabley’s bedroom. “Ah have a reputation. A family.” Cicely’s mother only cried. “Ah can’t do dis anymore. Not wid another on di way. Ah can’t continue to keep dis secret. My children deserve a good life.” A week later her mother was found dead, her naked body decomposing in the Pennyfield dump right by Cicely's primary school, covered with zinc. Cicely was only twelve years old.

  Years later, Cicely met her husband on the street one windy afternoon when she was on her way to work. That was when she used to work as a home health aide in Sunset Park to fund her night school courses. Her umbrella blew away into the middle of Fourth Avenue, and he rescued it for her. Even in her pink scrubs, clogs, and braids, which the Africans on Fulton Street pulled tightly into neat boxes, Cicely didn’t just accept the man’s heavy flirtation, she expected it. She also took one look at his shoes—a pair of wing tips in which she probably could have seen her reflection if she stared hard enough and knew that a man with shoes like that liked beautiful things.

  “You’d think with all the cleaning you’ve been doing that I could eat my next meal from every damn piece of furniture in this house,” he says, getting up and straightening with his hands in the pockets of his flannel pajamas. He’s walking around now, his burgundy robe like a cape, as he scrutinizes everything with a critical eye. He picks up a butterfly-shaped glass from the coffee table.

  “Marcus, what is it?” Cicely asks, her heart beating fast inside her chest.

  Marcus seems to grimace at her comment. “A husband can’t come downstairs to see what’s keeping his wife up at night?”

  “Well, here I am,” Cicely says, shrugging her shoulders. “You see what I’m up to. I had to put something in the dryer and say good night to my friend.” Her eyes dart around the room, searching for words in the shadows crouched in the corners, her guilt immobilizing her.

  Marcus stares at her for what seems like a long time, as if watching for something.

  “Your friend. Huh.”

  “Yes.” She meets his gaze.

  “Well, your friend needs to go.” He returns his attention to the butterfly-shaped glass in his hand, caresses it with his thumb, hefts it as if trying to discern how much it weighs.

  “Go where?” Cicely asks, watching him.

  “She needs to find a place.”

  “But she jus’ got here, Marcus. She hasn’t even gotten a job interview yet.”

  “I’m not going to allow her to live off us like a parasite. You know how Jamaicans can get.”

  “What’s dat supposed to mean? You’re Jamaican yuhself,” Cicely hisses.

  “My parents were. They’re dead. I was raised by a Jewish family,” Marcus says between clenched teeth, his jawbones pulsing like the rage in Cicely’s loins, his hands clamped around the glass, threatening to break it.

  “It doesn’t make you one of them,” she hisses.

  “What do you know? Unlike certain people, I work for everything I have,” he says.

  “Certain people?” It’s Cicely’s turn to grimace. “Have you evah heard yourself speak? Di way how you put down our people as if you’re—”

  “I’m giving her a day.”

  “Have you been drinking? A day? What can she find in a day? Yuh know how hard it is to rent a place without papers?”

  Marcus looks her squarely in the face and says, “No. I do not know, and neither do I care. Consider this a generous act on my part, because any other man wouldn’t have given her another minute.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She said so herself. Right? About wanting to move out? Not wanting to intrude on you and your family? So how am I a bad person for giving her the opportunity to do so?”

  “You were listening!”

  “And what is this foolishness about me not having a say about who stays in my house?”

  “You were listening!” Her hands find their way to the sides of her face, cup her mouth. What else did he hear? Her legs feel like they’re about to give.

  “My own house!” He slams the glass down hard on the coffee table, which would have cracked had it not been made of solid wood.

  “You were listening!” she whispers, lowering herself on the sofa, him towering above her like God Himself.

  “And you know what hurts the most?” He’s peering deep into her eyes now, the green of his pupils hard marbles. His voice is low, steady. He comes closer, his hand at her throat. “You choosing her over me.”

  “You have no right—” she says, her breath shallow.

  “She lied to you, darling,” he says, his hand still at her throat. “Just like you lied to me. And just like you lied to her. Because you are pitiful. You’re as pitiful as a stray who nibbles at any hand that pets it.”

  “If I’m pitiful, what does sneaking around your own house make you?” Cicely asks, her composure driven by anger. “If you was half di man you say you are, then you wouldn’t—” Before she can finish her sentence, she’s searching her mouth for broken teeth. She hardly felt the blow, for when Marcus puts his fist to her face it’s almost like it never happened. At least that was how it felt when Cicely was struck by Marcus the first time. She thought it was happening to someone else—an actress in one of those silent movies who dramatically holds her cheek and screams. Meanwhile, Cicely experienced the whole thing floating above the scene, like a woman lying on a couch watching television. It wasn’t until she glanced in the mirror the next day, unable to recognize the woman staring back at her, that she realized what had really happened. She wept, trembling all over and turning her head from side to side to study her ugliness. For a woman who had always taken pride in her good looks, this was something new; something to live with.

  Cowering under the glittering crystals of the chandelier in anticipation of the next blow, Cicely hears the taunts. The voices of schoolchildren on a playground far, far away: Cicely’s primary school mates were unyeilding with their bullying after Mabley’s death when they found out what her mother did for a living and how she died. “There’s a brown girl in di ring, tra la la la! There’s a brown girl in di ring, traa la la . . .” Her head now spins from Marcus’s blow. The children point, their fingers pinning her in the circle. “Bull inna pen, cyan come out! Bull inna pen, cyan come out!”

  She doesn’t bother to get back up. She knows better. She has lost all the fight in her. She knows that her husband is right. She knows that if she wakes up the next morning and he’s not there, then she would have nowhere to go. What can Patsy give her n
ow that he cannot, besides their shared memories and guilt? Infinite responsibilities stretch before her, but she’s not prepared to deal with them. She cannot accept the burden of being in America without the advantage of living the dream, regardless of the abuse. Though she has to do things for her weekly allowance, like cook dinner and fuck her husband on a regular basis—even when she’s not in the mood—there’s still some semblance of stability. So when Patsy appears out of nowhere in her nightgown, pounding Marcus with her fists—”Don’t you dare put yuh hands ’pon har, or else me will kill yuh!”—in one quick motion Cicely springs up and shoves her friend hard. Patsy wheels and hits the floor, visibly stunned—too startled to move, her eyes large dark holes punched in the sockets.

  “Don’t you dare disrespect my husband like dat in his own house!” Cicely hisses. She hopes to communicate her desperation with her eyes. She had wanted to tell her quietly in the basement. But it’s too late. Moments later, Patsy scurries out of sight. Cicely only hears her friend’s footsteps down the stairs to the basement. Cicely almost runs after her, but Marcus pulls her back with his words.

  “I want her out of this house.”

  He walks past Cicely, who is standing in the middle of the living room wiping blood from her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m going to bed. Don’t make me wait too long.”

  She reaches like a blind person for the nearest thing to hold on to, to steady herself. She touches the surface of the white couch—too hurt to consider the risk of staining it and how much it will cost to hire professionals to clean it. She stumbles, succumbing to uncontrollable sobs as she climbs the staircase toward their bedroom, groping the banister and fumbling with the dress that feels like sandpaper around her. The hurt she saw in Patsy’s eyes lashes her—more painful than Marcus’s abuse. Regret almost chokes her when she remembers what Patsy did, what she sacrificed, her quiet willingness to suffer on Cicely’s behalf. A lifetime of love and friendship lost tonight in Cicely’s effort to defend the prison she has built for herself.

  12

  SIX DAYS. THAT’S HOW LONG TRU HAS COUNTED. SIX DAYS AND NO word from her mother since the missed phone call. The school bell rings, indicating the end of the school day. When the teacher tells the class to clasp their hands and close their eyes for prayer, Tru keeps one eye open.

  “Bless us, Father, our ruler, savior, and provider. Grant us with favor and make us worthy in your sight . . .”

  She mouths the unfamiliar prayer, sneaking a look over her shoulder toward the door, expecting to see her mother waiting like she used to. But there is no one at the door. Just the blue sky purged of the clouds that look like kings and queens sailing on ships in the clouds.

  “Trudy-Ann, are you deaf? I said all eyes closed!” The sound of the teacher’s voice pulls her back inside the classroom. She is calling Tru by her full name—just like her father. A name she has to adjust to. A name as foreign to Tru as that of her new school and classmates. Tru is mercilessly plopped in the second grade with children older than her. She knows that she’ll be a big girl when she turns six in a few weeks, but Roy, who knows the principal of the new school because she is the wife of another policeman at his precinct, never asked Tru if she was comfortable switching schools, much less skipping first grade. Worse, Tru had to watch Marva fold her old Saints Basic School blue tunic that her mother had specially made by the local seamstress and put it inside a trunk filled with moldy clothes. Tru’s new school uniform is bigger on her—passed on to her by Agnus, an older girl who lives next door, and who still sucks her thumb when Marva braids her hair on Sundays. The green tunic makes Tru look like a vegetable, which she hates.

  After the class finishes their prayer, rows of chairs screech and voices soar at the sound of the last bell. It’s Friday—a day Tru now dreads. Her mother used to treat her to KFC on Fridays after school. Now Fridays mean spending a whole weekend at her father’s house doing chores. It also means getting walloped by Mrs. Powell for failing yet another daily quiz—which Tru feels is unfair, since the quizzes are based on knowledge learned in the first grade, which she skipped. She hasn’t felt motivated to please this teacher like she felt with Miss Gains. Since her mother left, school hasn’t interested Tru much, and it’s obvious that this new teacher isn’t interested in teaching her. Mrs. Powell grades the quiz on the spot—marking x for wrong answers and bold red ticks for the right ones. Tru peers at her answers, knowing that she will get more x’s than ticks, and thus a spanking with the sturdy wooden ruler from Mrs. Powell again.

  Tru doesn’t spring up from her desk like her classmates. She makes a production out of zipping up her schoolbag—the same one she carried to school last year, the one her father tells her he will replace once her mother sends some money. Her hands are moist, her head down. From the sides of her eyes she sees the line formed at Mrs. Powell’s desk dwindling. Joseph—whose name Tru knows because, like her, he’s the class dunce—is currently bent over, receiving his spanking on his bottom—ten loud ones for each answer he got wrong. Mrs. Powell is hardly tender, even on days when she’s in a good mood. She’s a big yellow woman with gray hawk eyes, and a mouth that is fixed in a sneer. She beats them until the frayed straps of her brassiere slip below the short puffy sleeves of her blouse and her face turns pinker than the disgusting strawberry-flavored milk Tru is forced to drink at lunchtime in the cafeteria that smells like bleach.

  “Next!” Mrs. Powell calls, staring straight at Tru with those hawk eyes. She’s last in line.

  Tru takes measured steps toward Mrs. Powell’s desk. She hands her the exercise book, which has her name and class written on the front, and waits.

  “On the roster, it says you’re Trudy-Ann,” Mrs. Powell says. “Why yuh insist on writing Tru? You dat lazy? In my class I expect you to spell out yuh name, yuh hear?”

  “My mother name me Tru,” Tru says in a small voice, knowing she will get more lashes on top of what she’ll already get.

  “Pardon?” Mrs. Powell asks.

  “My mother name me Tru,” Tru repeats.

  “Where is yuh mother now? Is she here? Let her come tell me dat herself. Until then, you’re Trudy-Ann. Like it says on yuh records.”

  Tru nods, defeated. She watches Mrs. Powell’s pen, the curve of her mouth as she does the calculations in her head, the fat ringless fingers on her left hand—though she goes by Mrs. not Miss, which Tru learns to call all unmarried women, including Marva. Tru studies those fat fingers that trace the numbers in her exercise book the way she has seen Mr. Lewin, the blind man on Roundtree Road, read his special Bible in church. When Mrs. Powell finishes, she looks up at Tru. “Eight wrong out of ten.”

  She pauses as if expecting a response from Tru. But Tru, trying hard not to cry, doesn’t speak. “What?” Mrs. Powell says. “Yuh don’t study? Dey say you were the brightest one at Saints, so how come it seem like yuh ’ave the brain of a gnat inside dis class?”

  Mrs. Powell lifts her wooden ruler and gestures for Tru to turn around and bend over. Slowly Tru does as she’s told, clutching the edge of the table, tears already filling her eyes. The sound of the first lick on Tru’s rump echoes inside the empty classroom. With seven more licks to go, Tru clenches her muscles tight, not wanting to cry out, wishing she could enjoy it like Marva. She hears them at night—her father and Marva—in the room next to hers. When the night is completely still, there is always the low quaking, the heavy breathing, and the clapping sound like an open palm against skin. Tru tries to identify each noise, imagines her father and Marva taking the shape of animals howling at the moon, the way they carry on. One night the sounds pulled Tru out of her bunk and to their bedroom door, where she spied the two crouched figures—Marva naked and sweaty on all fours like she was holding down the floorboards, and Roy kneeling behind her. Marva was crying like she was hurting, although she was telling Roy not to stop. But the quaking slowed, followed by a lurch, and Tru’s father yelling, “Get di hell out!”

  Prickly heat now radiates fro
m Tru’s backside to the rest of her body as Mrs. Powell hits her. A flicker of sunlight makes its way through the louvered windows inside the classroom and lies across a table. Tru keeps her eyes focused on it. With each sting of the ruler that Mrs. Powell uses, Tru remembers her father’s words, “She not coming back.” She remembers too his anger that night when she stood paralyzed in the doorway. “Get di hell out!” And the buzzing of the dial tone six days before. Those days that are marked off with red x’s on the calendar, bright like Mrs. Powell’s marks beside wrong answers. Tru doesn’t realize the beating has stopped until Mrs. Powell says, “So you jus’ g’wan stay there bend over like yuh enjoy it?” But Tru only looks down at her whitened knuckles, still clutching the table, numb.

  Book III

  JOHN-CROW’S CURSE

  13

  PATSY NOTICES THE PECULIAR SHAPES OF THE TREES, SOME OF which have begun to lose their leaves as Cicely drives her to the place she found for her to live. In the early morning, they have a sorrowful look to them, a dismal charcoal hue, same shade as the black birds that perch on their outstretched limbs. For Patsy has lost her ability to see color. This rain-soaked day, especially, has a mournful air about it. It’s hard now for Patsy to think about their sun-washed days together as girls. It’s harder for her to trust those memories. Cicely parks the car outside a house on a quiet Brooklyn street. The houses on this street are not brownstones like Cicely’s, but squat two-story buildings with decorative bricks on the outside, the roofs slanted, with small square windows looking out of them. They have small front yards with brown grass surrounded by chain-link fences.

  Cicely shuts off her car engine and, without looking at Patsy, says, “This is it. I found dis place through a friend of a friend. Di owner seem like a nice woman.”