Patsy

by Patsy (retail) (epub)

  Patsy doesn’t say anything. Not even expressing her gratitude to Cicely for convincing Marcus to let her stay six more days until she found something. She goes to open the door on her side, but Cicely places her hand on hers, her lashes darkened by tears and the right side of her face bruised, though she tried to cover it up with makeup. Her apology rushes out in an exhaled breath. “I’m so sorry.”

  But Patsy cannot bring herself to meet her friend’s imploring gaze. She is moved to cry at the sheer insanity, the inner chaos of tangled emotions, which pressed her blind across the ocean to be with a woman who doesn’t feel the same way about her. She was certain of what she read in those letters, the true-to-life presence of something she could not explain. They were sitting inside the old house on Jackson Lane, hidden from view, the first time Cicely kissed her. They were fourteen then, gossiping about boys—mostly about the boys who liked Cicely and who she didn’t like back—boys who wore jerry curls and called themselves Casanovas. Patsy had sex with all of them. Those were her days of exploring, feeling obligated to please boys she wanted to like her too. The year Mama G started hearing the voice of God, Patsy, only nine years old, had stuffed herself with toilet paper thinking she was bleeding to death. When Mama G found out, she locked Patsy inside the house and prayed with her, anointing Patsy with rosemary oil. “Keep har temple holy, dear Jesus.” Frightened, Patsy clutched the soiled sheets, smelling a subtle yet overpowering scent coming from between her legs that reminded her of the smell of the sun-drenched zinc she spread clothes on to dry on Sundays. Mama G then told Patsy that her body was a temple, and for a long time, Patsy didn’t understand what she meant. She simply existed then, floating near but outside her own body, feeling invincible. Or perhaps feeling is not the right word, given that she felt nothing at all. Not until that afternoon when Cicely, who lived vicariously through Patsy’s tales of fucking, flushed pink from the indecency of their gossip, put her hand on Patsy’s knee.

  The touch was so tender that Patsy had to look down at the hand to see if it was really there. Then, without caution or any hint of apprehension, Cicely leaned over and kissed Patsy. Patsy didn’t have time to pull back or even process what was happening in that moment. All she knew was that she loved the feel of Cicely’s lips on hers. She closed her eyes, breathing evenly as Cicely’s lips moved to her ear. “Show me,” she whispered to Patsy. And, lying on the grass that sprouted through the cracks in the concrete of the old house amid the debris, both of them still wearing their school uniforms, Patsy placed her arms comfortably around Cicely. They joined, it seemed: their faces close, their mouths opening, their bodies rubbing, and Patsy, who had previously felt she was circling the world on a wind outside herself, came, pouring her soul into Cicely’s. Patsy had never felt life bursting inside her like that, hyper-aware of the sun, the earth, the grass beneath them; of herself buried between Cicely’s legs, rapt.

  After that, their friendship took on a new, ambiguous form. Cicely and Patsy went on dating boys, and reasonably so, for Cicely, like Patsy, knew that what happened inside the old house was not condoned. She observed Cicely’s interactions with the boys who hounded her at Roman Phillips Secondary, laughing with her, clowning to get her attention. Patsy’s eyes swept on, but they’d inevitably lock with Cicely’s with guarded desire. They had no place for this desire besides the old abandoned house, hidden by posts of blue mahoe and palm trees and a fence of weeds, at least six feet tall, that formed a ring around it. Concealed and secured by the lushness and decay around them, on top of a beach towel spread on the ground, the girls attained the fullest freedom.

  Then one evening—just months after Cicely started university, commuting from Pennyfield to campus each day—it happened. Patsy’s arms were tight around Cicely’s waist when she heard the rustling in the bushes, thinking they were mongooses or lizards. Suddenly feet drew near, and before she knew it, a man crept from the bushes and attacked them. Everything exploded like an orange flare, and Patsy’s eyes helplessly followed the man’s arc toward Cicely. In slow motion, he curved downward, his arms swept out, his whole body lunged in one live motion to scoop her. Patsy remembered seeing his mouth moving, but not hearing anything he said. Everything, it seemed, occurred without sound—the shattering of the rusted mirror that stood nearby, Cicely’s wail as blood gushed from her head, and the man’s fall on shards of broken glass.

  Now, in the car, Patsy just wants to be alone, to hide her face in her hands and wail or laugh—whichever one will rid her of the bitter taste in her mouth. None of this should ever have happened.

  “I still care about you . . .” Cicely is saying.

  “Don’t,” Patsy replies, her voice a choked whisper. “Don’t guh there wid me. Ah know why it’s difficult fah you. Cicely, we both bled dat day, way back. Dere was no sun in di clouds aftah dat. Me an’ Roy neva love like you an’ me did love. He knew dat. But Tru came, an’ ah thought . . .” Her voice trails. “Ah realized dat wasn’t my life. Ah realized dat my life is wid you. When yuh told me ah could come to America, ah left every’ting.”

  “You left yuh life. Yuh family. Yuh dawta, jus’ fah me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me di truth.”

  “Ah jus’ did. Ah wanted to start ovah wid you, Cicely.”

  “Patsy . . .” Cicely says quietly. “There’s no way I’m going back to dat.”

  “Yuh safe now. No one can hurt you or hurt us no more.”

  “Dis is my life now, Patsy,” Cicely says. “I built a life here wid Marcus. If ah leave he’d neva let me take our son. He would fight fah sole custody if any ah dis ever get out. Ah can’t afford to jeopardize what ah have. It was neva my intention to hurt you. Despite what yuh saw dat night wid me an’ Marcus, we’re happy. An’ so is Shamar . . .”

  “Coulda fooled me,” Patsy says. “We getting out dis car or not? Because I’m done wid dis convah-sation.”

  As they stand on the steps in front of the house, both damp-faced from the slight drizzle—Patsy with her suitcase next to her and Cicely in her stylish clothes and a purse slung over her shoulder—Patsy tries hard not to look at Cicely, though she senses her silhouette limp with regret. Cicely presses the buzzer again, too slowly. Someone peeps through a white curtain by the front window. There’s swift movement behind the door before it opens. A black woman, who looks to be in her forties, appears in a long thick pink robe that swallows her petite frame, with blue and black box braids piled on top of her head. She appears to be wearing a mask at first. She has a wide, screwed face, the face of a person who seems cross with the world—a Jamaican woman, no doubt, whose smiles and laughter are reserved for people she knows well and trusts. But Patsy can hardly imagine her laughing or smiling at all with those expressionless eyes.

  “Me neh expec’ anyone dis early,” the woman says without greeting. Patsy wonders which part of the island she’s from, sounding like that. Patsy only made out the word early. She realizes that the discoloration she sees on the woman’s face is from bleaching creams. The smell of fish hurries toward Patsy and she begins to think it’s a mistake, being here at the mercy of a woman who bleaches her skin and cooks fish this early in the morning.

  Cicely seems hesitant, as if she’s afraid the smell of fish will insinuate itself into her clothes and she would carry it with her all day. She pauses uneasily at the door, her pale hands barely touching the frame, and says, “Uhm—I have to take my son to school. My friend needs this room as soon as possible. If you don’t mind showing her around, that would be great. I will pay you security and first month’s rent up-front.”

  Something flickers across the woman’s wide face at the sound of Cicely’s voice giving her orders. Patsy isn’t sure if it’s satisfaction or resentment that she sees. The woman’s dark eyes size Cicely up, slowly taking in her pale skin, her light eyes, her green cardigan with a gold pin, white button-down shirt, slim-fitting dark jeans, and brown leather loafers, her expensive-looking wedding band with all the diamonds, and her ch
iming bracelets around her thin wrist as she flashes the white envelope padded with cash. Patsy sees her friend in the eyes of this woman—a woman who is probably from an area like Bull Bay or Old Harbor; a woman who probably went to the toilet in an outhouse and washed at an outside standpipe or a bucket of water with her many siblings; a woman who attended secondary school like Patsy and Cicely, or no school at all, maybe because she had to help her mother sell at the market, forced to cut the prices of their produce in half by the types of people who looked down on them and laughed at their patois.

  So it must be with great pleasure and pride that this woman is in this position, hearing a hint of desperation in Cicely’s voice. The woman braces her shoulders as if readying herself to say something rigged with irony, a smirk deepening the already deep lines around her mouth. But just as quickly her shoulders curve again and the smirk transforms into a smile that shocks her features when Cicely—making direct eye contact and touching her with ease when she slips her the envelope—addresses her as “ma’am”: “Ma’am, I’m so sorry. I know it’s early, but she has nowhere else to go.”

  Any fragments of resentment Patsy imagined on the woman’s face die with Cicely’s gesture. Addressing Cicely in her best English, complete with the affecting h, which working-class Jamaicans use in front of vowels to sound high-class, she says, “Well, h-I was going to straighten h-up a likkle before h-anyone come—ah mean, came. My mother would roll in har grave to know h-I ’ave guests parading through a messy house.”

  Though she owns a house in America now, with brick exterior and inside plumbing, it’s obvious that the woman knows her place, that because of how she was raised, and despite being in a big country like America, she would always think of herself as inferior to the likes of Cicely. So it is with the excitement of a graduate awarded a certificate that the woman takes Cicely’s money, tucks it in the pocket of her robe, apologizes profusely for the fish smell and for not having time to clean up, introduces herself as Beverly, and lets Patsy inside.

  Patsy presses the tiger’s-eye necklace into Cicely’s hand. Cicely looks down at it, openmouthed; her brows furrow, but she says nothing. Tears sting Patsy’s eyes, an obscure sense of profound loss creeping up on her as she takes her suitcase and follows Beverly inside the house. The front door closes softly behind them.

  Patsy looks around her new surroundings, noticing the clutter in the family room—magazines spread out over the coffee table with some of the pages ripped out, a Domino’s pizza box, folded clothes piled on a brown sofa, a food tray with cotton balls, nail file, and an open tube of pink nail polish, a wastebasket full of balled-up paper. A group of lazy, rowdy teenagers might be staying here, Patsy thinks.

  Cicely’s exit seems to have taken with it Beverly’s forced politeness. Her voice hardens with an edge when she begins to reel off her dos and don’ts: “No pets, no outside guests, no sex. Dis is not a hotel. Yuh only have access to di bathroom on di second floor. Di family room is exactly what it should remain—a family room. Off-limits to renters. So is di kitchen. If yuh hungry, dere’s plenty food places ’pon Sutter Avenue, few blocks from here. Mek sure to clean up aftah yuhself. You buy what yuh break in dis house. If yuh eat my food, yuh buy it back. Or get kicked out. Ah keep a good inventory. Rent is due every Friday, first t’ing. Cash only. Small bills preferred. Jus’ put it all in an envelope an’ slide it undah my bedroom door down di hall to di right.”

  When she’s through and standing before Patsy with her hands on her narrow hips, she looks much, much older and meaner. “Any questions?” she asks. She waits for less than a second before she says, “Good. Di room is upstairs.”

  She leads Patsy up the rickety staircase that looks like a ladder, up to the attic. Patsy looks around the small, dusty space that Beverly is charging a hundred and fifty dollars a week for. There’s still a mound of junk piled in one corner. There’s nowhere to put her clothes. The twin-size bed that Patsy will sleep on is in the center of the room, which gets its light from the small prison-like window that looks out onto the street. Patsy breathes lightly, afraid any sudden movement might upset the unstable floors. Beverly stands at the door, her hand on the knob. “My son, Tyriq, can help carry up yuh suitcase when he gets home from work. If yuh need anyt’ing I’m usually downstairs during di day. I work at nights, so it’s important dat ah get my sleep. I only answer to emergencies.”

  Patsy spends the whole day curled up on her new bed, cycling between sleep and wakefulness. That evening, she sits and stares at the gray sky and the trees. She refuses to go back downstairs, though the house stirs with life below her. As the sun finally emerges from dark gray clouds to make its final bow, she reaches for the tiger’s-eye pendant around her neck, out of habit, and finds the area bare. A shadow sweeps the room, and soon darkness spills inside. Patsy doesn’t reach for a switch. She doesn’t even know where to find one. A liquid trail of disgust floods her chest. The unfairness of her life is the shock she has received upon discovering that a woman can break her heart more than any man—a woman to whom she gave everything and expected nothing in return. It’s the nothing that gets her—the fact that she was content with the nothing. Knowing that she is fully capable of feeling such visceral disgust for herself fills her with purpose, a drive to get on with it, gather the scattered pieces inside herself, and get her life back.

  14

  IT IS THE LAST WEEK OF SEPTEMBER. IN AUTUMN, NIGHT COMES too soon and seems to linger. Patsy, who thought she knew all about loneliness, is surprised to learn that it exists in a place like America. On television comedies, Americans always seem to have family members or friends who come over unannounced and eat from their refrigerator. Or they have friendly yet inquisitive neighbors who speak to them over their picket fences and wave when picking up the newspaper on green lawns. Always, Americans are surrounded by people in those shows; and always, there’s a laugh track over their stress-free lives. Patsy yearns for that America.

  Her first thought when she wakes up every morning is, Will she remember? Tru must have heard the click on the other end of the phone. Patsy cannot escape what she’s done. It’s one thing to leave, but it’s another thing to call and hang up and keep silent. Patsy has sinned against her daughter. A sin that could be hard to forgive. And the darkness of this sin is like the darkness of the dawn outside. Or the one standing to the left of her, waiting.

  IT’S BEEN A WEEK—A WEEK OF JUST LYING ON HER BED, FACEUP, staring at the ceiling, barely able to close her eyes. She listens to the silence. Some mornings she hears Beverly moving about inside the house, muttering to herself. Patsy hears her chatter with her son, the clatter of pots and pans, voices on the radio. She wills herself to get out of bed, wrestling with a familiar heaviness—one that has paralyzed her in the past, smothered her inside its vast darkness. She used to be frightened of it, but now it is a companion, quiet and omnipresent. She fights the urge to give up and surrender to it. Out of sheer will, she uses her right hand to stir her desire for life’s simplest pleasure beneath the thick comforter. For to feel absolutely nothing at all is terrifying. At least with a little touching, there is the pleasant anticipation of arriving someplace, rather than merely existing. Usually she is mindful and particular about what she thinks about when she masturbates—the slight rise of a calf muscle, the rhythm of a throat swallowing, a flash of tongue. But now, without notice, slipping through the filters of her mind and rushing into the opening of suspended time, is Cicely. And every time she thinks of Cicely, grief comes over her; its giant hands clasp around her neck so tight that all she can let out is a whimper. What she once regarded as perverse seems fitting now—to let her thoughts and feelings roam about, knock things over, thrash with yearning and then outrage. She cannot bear to feel this loss without having a way of releasing it. Her body stiffens with ache, and she contemplates what it would be like to waste away inside this attic, too small to contain her grief, reeling from pleasure to remorse to pleasure, surrendering to the urges, unable to stop her
self, until she drifts, moaning and exhausted, into sleep.

  She only comes down from the attic to use the toilet and shower in the bathroom, which has walls the color of Pepto-Bismol. Frilly white curtains decorate the window, which looks over into someone’s backyard. She’s unable to eat the groceries Cicely brought to Beverly’s doorstep one night. Beverly had knocked on Patsy’s door and told her that her friend left something for her. “A bag ah grocery,” Beverley said. “Ah tell har yuh not allowed to use di kitchen. She gave me two hundred dollahs extra for you to use it. Be my guest, but only dis once.” But Patsy didn’t budge. The groceries stayed on the kitchen counter in the paper bag for a whole week, untouched. When it becomes clear that this is her life now—that she made this decision on her own to come to America and therefore doesn’t have the luxury of lying in bed, Patsy at last makes a concerted effort to look for a job.

  She used Beverly’s phone to leave Cicely a message telling her not to send anything for her; that she is fine on her own. In the act of asserting herself, clusters of metal seem to gather around her heart, forming a protective shield. This machine-mass is ugly, able to stave off emotions—its roar of defensiveness frightening, and its mechanical gestures seemingly controlled by someone merely pushing a button: “I don’t need you,” she repeated into the receiver, unblinking. And when Patsy hung up, the emotions that welled up inside her like a seething volcano spun without control within the roar of the machine to the point of eruption. Nothing but steam hissed through the twisted pipes of her veins. Fleetingly she saw herself powerless and without any knowledge of her new country, now that the boldness that had brought her here has vanished. But she refuses to become her mother. After Mama G walked off her job as a helper, saying God will provide, Patsy thought her mother had lost her mind. Her panic increased when her mother stopped doing the things she used to—like cook and clean and comb Patsy’s hair and shop for groceries and pay the rent. Simple things Patsy used to take for granted. A whole month went by before Patsy, caught in the very teeth of starvation, walked several miles to the cement company where Uncle Curtis worked. The security guard at the front desk stood up from his small kiosk and looked down at Patsy, who was half his height; his face was fixed in a mixture of confusion and panic at the sight of a child in her blue and white uniform tunic that she was surely outgrowing at nine years old, hair braided in a haphazard way she combed herself, navy-blue socks slipping inside a pair of worn black shoes stripped of their faux-leather.