Patsy

by Patsy (retail) (epub)

  “What yuh doing here?” the security guard asked.

  “Ah want to see Mr. Curtis Willoughby, sah.”

  “Yuh should be at school.”

  “It’s an emergency, sah.”

  The man looked around the big compound and scratched his head under his peaked cap as though he didn’t know what to do. He grabbed his walkie-talkie from around his waist and spoke into it. “Missah Fedrick! Ye-yes—is Tony from front gate. Ah which part Willoughby station again? Ah pickney waiting at di front desk to see him. She seh is an emergency.” As he talked, he peered at Patsy, his brows raised. She looked down at her feet as she shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Luckily, the hum of machines on the compound was loud enough to camouflage the growl in her gut. Timidly, she stared at the big metal columns and steel pipes against the backdrop of a hill, the hill’s grandeur minimized by the larger-than-life machines that produced the country’s cement. A gentle touch on her shoulder pulled her gaze back down to earth. She turned and looked up into the kind face of Uncle Curtis. Something about his demeanor—assured and gentle—made her want to cry in his arms.

  “Mama not well,” she told him when he lowered his yellow hard hat, his face covered in gray dust. His teeth were a startling white against the unnatural charcoal color of his face from the cement. He got down on one knee. “What happened?” he asked, his eyes darting over her face like a doctor checking for signs of illness.

  “We have no food in di house.”

  Uncle Curtis shook his head. A cuss word died on his lips when he put his head down. “How long you been without food?”

  “Since yuh left.”

  Uncle Curtis had been in and out of their lives. The first time he left on his own. He and Mama G had their quarrels over women he met at the bar, women who sometimes knocked at the gate to ask for him, women Mama G cussed out in the street before she got saved. Uncle Curtis ended up living with his mother in Denham Town. That was around the same time Mama G took another man into their lives—a man she fell on her knees for and prayed to every day for strength, a man whose name Mama G uttered softly, stroking the cross, staring at the world without really seeing it. “Jesus,” she whispered to Him like a lover.

  “Promise dat you’ll come back,” Patsy said to Uncle Curtis. “Mama need you. I need you.”

  Uncle Curtis paused. A silence mounted between them as though her request had erected a wall. He became rigid and closed his eyes. This gesture was more charged with sound than the machines. As he opened his mouth to respond, Patsy’s belly growled again, this time louder than any of the machines and the breeze that picked up and blew cement in her eyes. Uncle Curtis’s shoulder dropped and he stood up. There was a look of tenderness in his eyes and some other emotion she could not identify. He held on to Patsy’s hand, and that afternoon he told the security guard to tell his boss that he’d be gone for the day—that his wife (though he and Mama G never married) was gravely ill and his daughter needed him. The fact that he referred to Patsy as his daughter moved Patsy. Her mouth trembled at the sweetness of it. Patsy loved him then.

  IT’S FREEZING OUTSIDE WHEN PATSY FINALLY LEAVES THE HOUSE.

  Wrapping a thick green scarf around her neck and securing the zipper on her black winter jacket, which Cicely bought her, Patsy remembers again the desperation she felt seeing her mother sit around, detached from everything, clutching the Bible. It comes back to her—the hunger that made her walk all those miles to find Uncle Curtis. She takes the first step away from the shame into the autumn sun that glowed without warmth.

  SHE PASSES BY OTHER HOUSES ON THE STREET. THE PORCHES ARE empty. Two houses have bells that chime in the breeze. Several houses have pumpkins on their front steps. One house has an oversized balloon of a black spider, cobwebs, and a white ghost in the front yard, already in preparation for Halloween, which is at the end of the month. Patsy remembers what Cicely told her about Halloween—that it is an event for children to dress up in scary costumes and ask for candies. Yet when Patsy asked Cicely what’s her son’s favorite costume, Cicely somberly told her that they don’t partake in Halloween. Marcus hates it when children ring their doorbell, and would argue that a black boy needs no costume to be scary in America. But that’s not the only date in October that Patsy commits to memory.

  October is her daughter’s birth month. Tru turns six this month, on the eighteenth. Patsy stops just short of the last house on the block, struck by the realization. But when she remembers the failed phone call and her cowardice, she continues to walk down the street, weighed down by her sin.

  It feels to Patsy like she’s wearing someone else’s shoes shuffling the fallen golden leaves on the ground, someone else’s clothes on top of hers; the jacket and scarf are as foreign to Patsy as the new streets. She stops at the corner of a busy intersection, watching cars go by. Everything and everyone seems to be in constant motion. There are two bus stops—one on each side of the street. She looks left, then right. Yesterday, Beverly told her that she can catch a bus to downtown Brooklyn where all the stores and businesses are. With only a hundred dollars left to her name, Patsy has to find a job as soon as possible. Ray of Hope contacted her through Cicely, who left a message with Beverly, saying that the nanny position is no longer available—that the couple wants a nanny with at least a bachelor’s degree. Americans really serious ’bout dem child care, Patsy thinks. Laughter tickles her throat at the absurdity of needing a bachelor’s degree to babysit.

  Patsy spots a white woman wearing a fuzzy yellow hat with a pom-pom on top and a long purple coat, standing at the bus stop. She doesn’t really look like she’s from around here, though she stands comfortably, rocking back and forth on the heels and toes of her laced-up boots, her hands inside her coat pockets, whistling. She’s the only one Patsy can ask for directions, but Patsy stalls, flipping the question on her tongue, which feels heavy all of a sudden. In Jamaica she didn’t speak to the white people who wandered into town, adventurous and polite, perpetually flushed. Should she change the way she speaks like Cicely does whenever she talks to them, or to her son and Marcus? How would they react to her in their own territory? Cicely mentioned that some white people can be racist. But how can Patsy tell by just looking at them? Should she just assume all of them are racist? Cicely said it’s in the eyes and smile—one can tell by their body language and whether or not they smile like a mannequin or a real person when they talk to you. But how would Cicely know? As far as Patsy is concerned, Cicely is damn near white herself. Patsy decides to take her chances and approach the white woman at the bus stop.

  “Guh—good morning,” Patsy says in the tone she used with Miss Clark and other higher-ups at the Ministry.

  Good morning is always a safe bet, a sure indication that one has had good home training. But the woman continues to whistle, looking in the direction of the bus she’s waiting for, and at the cars creeping behind a big truck sweeping the street with a huge brush. A train roars above their heads as Patsy composes herself and adjusts each word amid the noise rattling the tracks. She clears her throat and speaks louder, since she also learned from Cicely that touching people in America could get you in trouble. In Jamaica, people touch all the time. If you’re in line at the bank and didn’t hear the teller call you, the person behind you would tap you on the shoulder. If you announce at work that you’re not well, the nearest person might put their hand on your back and rub it. In the middle of a conversation, an acquaintance might pause to very gently fold your collar or pop a dangling thread off your blouse. If you’re in a bus or taxi and there’s no more room, someone might end up on your lap, or you on theirs. Here Patsy raises her voice from a safe distance:

  “Excuse me, miss?”

  The woman turns. “Hi, there! Can I help you?”

  Her wide eyes are cobalt-blue, her face pink. Patsy catches a glimpse of her yellow hair underneath her yellow hat. Patsy is startled by the instant attention she’s given. In her best English, Patsy asks, “Is this bus going
downtown?”

  “It sure is!” the woman replies, her eyes still wide, her voice too loud. Patsy wonders if she always looks so surprised. There’s something so bubbly about her, so free. Back home, a grown woman wouldn’t be caught dead whistling in the street like that, rocking from toe to heel like a fidgety child. Jamaican girls begin to perform womanhood at eleven, at the latest twelve years old, their childlike wit suspended in the frozen glance of female elders, their youthfulness covered in starched uniforms and slips underneath, their animated curiosities discouraged with the weight of responsibilities like learning how to cook meat so that it’s browned properly, learning to clean, scrub stains out of white clothes, raise younger siblings, dodge the invasive lusts of older men. By twenty-five, any hint of animation is drained out of them, the muscles of their faces tightening, downturned mouths fixed in a meanness that mocks any form of gaiety as weary eyes hold in them contempt for those who fail to conform.

  Patsy responds coolly, “Thank you.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, though,” the woman continues in her loud voice. “The buses are atrocious today.” She then looks sideways at Patsy, pauses for a second before she says, “Bad. They’re really bad. That’s what I meant.”

  “Ah know what yuh mean,” Patsy replies, puzzled as to why the woman would assume she doesn’t know what the word atrocious means.

  The woman raises an eyebrow. “Where are you from?”

  “Jamaica.”

  “Nice!” the woman replies.

  Patsy is curious to know if she speaks like this all the time, ending her sentences with an exclamation. That might explain the perpetual startled expression on her face.

  “It must be so hard for you, leaving that nice weather for this.”

  She gestures as if at the chilly air around them. “I always wanted to experience snow,” Patsy says. “It look suh nice in storybooks an’ movies.”

  The woman laughs. “Wait till January. You’ll see what a headache it can be when it’s piled up. I’ve never been to Jamaica, but I know a lot of Jamaicans.”

  “You do?” Patsy asks.

  “Well, not know-know them!” she says in an incredulous tone, as though Patsy had asked her if she knew Diana Ross. “There’re just here—in Brooklyn.”

  “Hm.”

  She’s right. Patsy never went a mile in Crown Heights without seeing a Jamaican flag waving at her. But though Jamaicans lived there, they seemed so far removed, their lives contained within separate spheres moving at the fast pace of American life. Patsy begins to look deliberately at this new neighborhood surrounding her: an overweight mother ambling down the street with four children in tow, leading them inside the Crown Fried Chicken place; the men standing in front of the liquor store, already sipping bottles hidden inside brown paper bags. Her eyes dart to the graffitied brick walls on an old building, the overhead subway station ridden with pigeons, the small group of black teenagers laughing out loud, slaphappy, as they cross the street with their book bags. One of the drunks starts pissing by some parked cars, and the owner of the butcher shop, who is sprinkling salt on the sidewalk, yells at him, “Hey! Hey! I’ma call the cops if you don’t stop!”

  “What neighborhood is dis?” Patsy asks, genuinely curious. Again, it’s not anything she saw on television. Not even on The Cosby Show or The Jeffersons. And those shows had black people.

  “East New York,” the woman replies. She chuckles to herself and mumbles something incomprehensible about the place being a dump and not knowing how she ended up here. Patsy leaves it alone. She watches as two black men in leather coats leave the bodega outside of which a beggar is huddled, shaking a cup with loose change. They each drop some change inside the man’s cup, and he bows his head with gratitude. Both men sip their coffees from steaming Styrofoam cups. One bites into his breakfast sandwich, which is wrapped in foil paper. Their voices float toward Patsy when they get closer. “Yo! Ain’t that some messed-up shit? This nigga on vacation when he owes me.” They’re Americans, just like the woman she’s talking to. Black Americans. Cicely had warned Patsy against them—said they were lazy and always on welfare. “Dey don’t work hard like us. It’s as if dey want t’ings handed to dem.” She found Cicely’s dismissal unsettling, knowing it was coming from Marcus. For Cicely is from Pennyfield—a place looked at by the government and other Jamaicans alike as a dump infested with human burdens. She talked as if she had forgotten what it was like to be dismissed by her own country.

  There’s a sudden movement beside Patsy. The white woman subtly puts her beaten-up leather purse, which no one would want, in front of her. She simultaneously shoots a side glance at the two black men. When the men see Patsy staring at them too, they nod. Patsy smiles at them, her mouth unable to go all the way up, since her facial muscles are stiff from the cold and the shock of being acknowledged. She also cannot get her head to drop like theirs in time.

  They simply pass her by.

  “I heard it’s nice in Jamaica. A paradise,” the woman is saying next to her, a bit too loud. Patsy’s mind has moved beyond her to the backs of the two black men. Are they upset that she didn’t nod back? Is this their way of communicating? To the woman, who finally lets go of her purse, Patsy says, “You should go one day. You’ll enjoy it.” She’s unsure where this is coming from and immediately resents it. She also doesn’t know how this white woman, who seems afraid of black men, would fare in a country full of them.

  WHEN THE BUS FINALLY COMES, THEY GET ON. PATSY, LEARNING from the two black men she saw, nods at the black American woman driver. The bus driver doesn’t seem to notice, her hooded eyes glued somewhere else. She smooths her finger waves as she waits for Patsy to dig inside her pocket for the loose change. Patsy takes her sweet time to count her change to put into the slot. She asks the visibly impatient bus driver for a transfer like she has seen Cicely do, then finds a seat near the driver, since she doesn’t want to miss her stop. The white woman plops down right next to Patsy. “By the way, I’m DJ!” she all but screams into Patsy’s ear, pulling off her mittens with her teeth and digging inside a backpack. She takes out a thermos.

  “Like the letters?” Patsy asks, conscious of the others on the bus who turn around to look at the both of them.

  “Short for Deborah Jacob.”

  “I’m Patsy,” Patsy replies, not thinking it necessary to give her full name.

  “Aren’t you cold?” DJ asks. “You’re wearing a fall jacket. You need a coat!”

  Patsy looks down at the black jacket she has on, with its big flaps at the collar and a stylish zipper in the front, that Cicely found on sale in a store called Filene’s Basement. “Look at you, Miss Foreigner!” Cicely had said when Patsy modeled the jacket. She didn’t mention that the jacket was only for one season. But isn’t it still fall? “That thing won’t hold against a gust of wind,” DJ is saying.

  “I can’t afford a coat right now,” Patsy replies. “I have to get a job first.”

  “Where are you looking?” DJ asks.

  Patsy cannot think of anywhere right now. Her plan is to try everywhere. She’ll start with applying for anything she can find at the stores at Fulton Mall. Then she will try the restaurants. She has the résumé that the girl at Ray of Hope had typed up for her a couple weeks ago. The résumé doesn’t list the two courses in economics that she took at Excelsior Community College. She begins to regret not listing them. Cicely told her that they wouldn’t be relevant here. But maybe she would’ve gotten that nanny job had she not listened to Cicely.

  “Do you have an interview?” DJ asks.

  “Not yet.”

  “Try Macy’s!” DJ says. “They’re always looking for workers at this time of year. My friend Rositsa told me they’re hiring like crazy. She’s Bulgarian. Would you believe that? The girl could be a Victoria Secret model or something, but she’s stuck in bathroom accessories folding towels. She’s been working there for so long that she trains people how to fold towels. What’s so hard in that? That�
�s how she met her boyfriend, Lenny. Soon after he was hired they were sneaking off into the stockroom. Would you believe that? The stockroom! I started washing every new towel after that. ’Cause you just never know.” DJ is shaking her head, her glassy eyes staring straight ahead as if she’s visualizing the sexual acrobatics cushioned by stacks of tainted towels. She then glances at Patsy and winks. “My guess is that they wouldn’t have to teach you too many tricks in folding towels. You’d be a shoo-in! Don’t know much about Jamaica, but I know girls probably learn to fold towels in their sleep.”

  DJ continues to go on and on about the right detergents, and Patsy tunes her out. She’s already excited about the prospect of a job at Macy’s. For the rest of the ride, she takes in the view of Brooklyn, the hues of reds, yellows, and browns glistening in the sun. To Patsy, the sights come alive in a different way without Cicely telling her what to look at every other second. The coming winter provides a new canvas on which black and brown people huddle on sidewalks in coats and scarves, brownstones appear endless down the streets, frosted windows of storefronts gleam with the reflection of the blue sky. She begins to feel a part of things—streets become less foreign when she memorizes their names, people less intimidating. Two older women get on the bus. She observes them, eavesdropping on their conversation about the weather. She realizes, like she has with DJ, that Americans like small talk. Things like the weather or the delay of public transportation trigger their banter, bring them together. They’re also very loud. DJ reaches above Patsy’s head and presses the yellow band.