He stares at Patsy as if expecting her to speak. That’s when she says, in patois to this man who seems hungry to hear it, “Making people comfah-table is my passion, sah.”
A smile spreads across Bernie’s face. “You remind me so much of Peta-Gaye,” he says. “The way you sound, your look, your mannerisms. I think you’ll be perfect. Welcome to our family, Patsy.”
He extends his hand across the table. Patsy stares at the hand before shaking it. It’s her first time shaking someone’s hand. Who knew her first handshake would be with a white man who swears he knows more about Jamaican food than actual Jamaicans? She stores the irony for Cicely, wishing she could tell her everything. About the free food Bernie gave her to sample—curry salmon (which she has never heard of) and oxtail wallowing in a stew with no butter beans in it (unheard-of). She ended up spitting out the rubbery oxtail meat inside a napkin, and the curry salmon gave her a bad case of diarrhea. Poor souls have no clue that Bernie is a fraud, Patsy thinks. And poor Peta-Gaye, who will never know that her name has gone abroad to sell mediocre food—a fate that would surely make her granny roll in her grave.
17
THE JOB TAKES SOME GETTING USED TO. THE FIRST NIGHT PATSY was left alone to clean the toilets, she stared at the tiled floors and stained bowls, water dripping in the sink, unable to believe that this is her life now. Worse, the stalls have no trash bins. And though there is a sign that reads PLEASE DO NOT THROW PAPER TOWELS OR FEMININE PRODUCTS IN THE TOILET, the toilets keep getting clogged with sanitary napkins. Patsy almost cried the first night when she could still see the red of the blood on the pads and tampons she was expected to get rid of. She thought of the beautiful women she observed applying lipstick and powdering their noses in front of the mirror, unable to believe they could do such a thing. Patsy had to plunge several times before pulling out the almost disintegrated pads, each more grotesque than the one before.
In Jamaica, this is the lowest job one could get. She wonders how many other Jamaicans come here and end up doing this. Patsy cannot recall anyone writing relatives in Pennyfield saying they found a job cleaning toilets and handing out paper towels.
But it’s either this or having sex with the furniture store man. The manager, Alan, is black. He might be black American, but Patsy isn’t sure, since he has no accent. He’s very chummy with Bernie and only speaks to the hostesses, waiters, and bartenders, but never to the lower staff like the dishwashers, busboys, and bathroom assistants—unless he’s giving orders. He made this known to Patsy on her first day when she greeted him with a hearty “Good evening!” and he snubbed her, letting her greeting fall on deaf ears. Patsy decided right there and then that she didn’t need to be friends with Alan’s high donkey behind anyway. When he stands, his bottom juts from the curve of his back, erect in those bright suits he wears, feet pointed outward. It also swings when he walks. But what’s more tragic than a man with a woman’s behind is her pay. When Alan hands Patsy her first weekly pay in cash, she notices that it is significantly smaller than what she expected.
“Ah t’ink there’s a mistake,” Patsy says to Alan, assuming he, more than anyone else, would understand her concern.
“Excuse me?” Alan asks, furrowing his meticulously plucked eyebrows, which he might have gotten done by one of the Indian ladies who wave flyers at people at Fulton Mall. Instantly he assumes the air of a person who has not known struggle. His question appears genuine, the whites of his eyes a stark, almost brilliant contrast to his onyx pupils that seem to gleam with childlike curiosity. But what more can she expect from a man with long, effeminate fingers, which display shiny buffed nails and soft pink flesh underneath like they have never been dirtied?
“Dis is two dollars and fifty-eight cents below what Bernie say I’ll get,” Patsy says.
Alan seems a bit surprised by her calculations, which reminds her of the principal who could not believe that she scored perfect points on her CXC mathematics exam. Leaning over just slightly to peer at the few twenty-dollar bills in her hand, he shrugs and says, “You may want to take that up with Bernie. I’m certain it’s not a mistake. It’s different when we’re paying you under the table. At least it’s something.”
She takes what she gets. And although she resents him for his apathy, the way he simply shrugged her off, she knows that he is right—that it’s better than nothing. It becomes clear to Patsy that she needs another job to supplement this one, and clearer still that she needs papers if she wants to survive in America.
SHE QUICKLY MASTERS THE ART OF BEING INVISIBLE, STAYING IN her corner and observing women examining their faces in the mirror as they wash their hands. Patsy listens to their chatter and bathroom laughter filling the air like bleach. She learns intimate details about these well-dressed white women who don’t bother to whisper, talking to each other from separate stalls. Most of them, she learns, think they’re fat. This might explain the kale-ackee wrap—another unique entrée Patsy has never heard of and is absolutely sure that the real Peta-Gaye had never cooked—being the most popular item on the menu. Even the stick-thin women who look like they could use a whole plate of oxtail stick their fingers down their throats over the toilets, thinking Patsy can’t hear them or not caring if she does. She doesn’t know for certain if they’re vomiting to stay skinny or if they’re doing it because the food is disgusting.
Some only seem at ease with themselves after they powder and repowder their nose. A few of them end up breaking the ice, sometimes asking Patsy to help them zip, tuck, button, or dab spots out of clothes. Some confess things to Patsy that she doesn’t think are any of her business—like the woman with long dark hair parted in the middle like Cher’s, who told her that she was on a blind date with a man her cousin set her up with: “I hope he doesn’t think I’m too old or less attractive than what my cousin described.”
Another woman broke down in tears and told Patsy that her husband just asked for a divorce over dinner. “Hush,” Patsy told her above her sniffles, handing her a paper towel for her to blow her nose. “It g’wan be all right,” she said. “Everyt’ing will be all right.” That night, Bob Marley’s music was playing in the restaurant, and Patsy wondered if she said that to the woman because she was expected to, or if she really meant it. She wished that she had someone to comfort her this way.
Patsy watches these women, mesmerized always by their primping, yet strangely envious and respectful. For, somehow, even though she’s cleaning up after them and pumping their soap and hand lotion and egos, there is no question that they are truly women; they can so easily prove it by flipping their long hair, putting on the fanciest dresses that show as much of their fair skin as possible—skin that is never looked at as less than, skin that can grant them a place anywhere in the world, skin that makes men open doors and give up seats, and hair that makes Patsy recall those dolls Mama G couldn’t afford to get her for Christmas. They’re like the dolls that reminded Patsy of the uptown children Mama G looked after, smiling broadly every time she talked about them, dolls that were passed on to Patsy secondhand from those uptown children who had outgrown them. How she treasured them! How she loved and cared for them. Until she met Cicely.
FIONNA, THE OTHER BATHROOM LADY, WHO WORKS WITH PATSY during her weekend shifts, is the only one Patsy can talk to. Fionna is a small-boned Trinidadian woman in her late twenties like Patsy, with a short haircut that frames her peanut-colored cheeks. She’s so polite that she says thank you even when the women don’t tip her.
“All di women here want to be skinny,” Patsy muses as she rolls the warm hand towels and stocks them on the marble counter by the green eucalyptus plant inside the gold-plated ceramic pot. Scented candles glow underneath the two oblong mirrors above the wide sink, which has two brass faucets with jaunty tubular shapes and a slanted spout. Patsy and Fionna pull the single levers down for the women each time they wash their hands, and give them the warm folded white towels.
“Is so American women stay, m’dear. Dying to be thin.”
Fionna laughs from her side of the sink. “Mek dem g’waan waste away.”
“But dey got all dis food.” Patsy shakes her head, unable to fathom all the waste. “How dey starve themselves, wid all dis food?” One thing about America that Patsy loves is the ability to overindulge in foods like pizza, hamburgers, and all-you-can-eat buffets for cheap—foods that you can get for a dollar ninety-nine, foods that would’ve been considered foreign delicacies back home, foods that the people on the hills eat. Here, she can’t get enough of them.
“Dat’s because men like dem women skinny here,” Fionna says as she lights the scented candles by her mirror and dims the overhead light a little, which deepens the emerald green bamboo wallpaper. “Di more yuh look like a beanpole, di more attractive you are to American men. Dem not into meat a’tall, a’tall. Jus’ bare bone.”
“But what kinda man like a woman dat can break?” Patsy asks.
Fionna puts her hands on her hips. “Excuse me, but I’m tiny and I can’t break. In fact, di more hung him is, di bettah.”
Fionna covers her mouth, slightly flushed by her own indecency. Patsy laughs at her coworker’s sudden shyness, liking her even more for her underlying brashness. When she sobers, Patsy says, “Everyone is suh nice, though.”
“Be careful wid dat,” Fionna replies. “Dey smile in we face. But dem same one would go behind we back an’ stab we. I used to work as a bathroom lady at another restaurant before dis one. Yuh know what happened? I got fired. One day, out of di blue, my manager pull me to di side an’ tell me dat a woman complain dat she wasn’t happy wid me service. When me check it out, it was one of the women who I thought was the nicest to me. She would tip me well, compliment my hair, an’ everyt’ing. Di woman couldn’t even tell me she was unhappy to my face. She had to go report it to di manager. Dat’s why yuh can’t be too comfortable wid Americans. I ain’ saying yuh can’t talk up-talk-up wid people. All I’m saying is dat Americans funny. Keep yuh business to yuhself an’ mek dem do all di talking.”
“An’ dat Alan, what’s his deal?” Patsy asks.
“Yuh mean Alana?” Fionna laughs.
Patsy laughs too. “Why him suh uptight?”
“Chile, dat’s what happen when people forget themselves.”
“What yuh mean?”
“Yuh don’t notice?”
“Notice what?”
“Dat him is Jamaican?”
“Jamaican? Alan?” Patsy asks. “Yuh lie!”
“Chile, ask where him come from.”
“Him don’t talk to me like dat.”
“Jus’ compliment she outfit an’ she favor yuh.”
They both laugh again, this time unable to control themselves. However, their laughter snaps into silence when an older woman with red hair enters the restroom.
PATSY AND FIONNA FALL INTO A QUICK AND EASY FRIENDSHIP, splitting the tips from the jar at the end of the night. Sometimes they use the money to buy dinner at the cheap diner up the street where the tables smell of the wet rag they were wiped down with; where lipstick stains remain on glasses and mugs; where the utensils are stained, blackened by oxidation and where the food drips with grease. Patsy and Fionna love to order tea to rid any gas from their stomachs from long hours working without eating. It’s hard to take breaks when the restaurant is busy. Patsy notices that Fionna also likes to sweeten her tea with extra sugar, since there’s no condensed milk. Patsy feels somewhat restored sitting across from Fionna, their commonalities fortifying their bond. At the diner, they talk about home. Patsy doesn’t mention Tru and the crime she committed against her. She decides that some things are better left unsaid, though it continues to haunt her—some days more than others. Since she started working at the restaurant, she realizes that most of the money she earns goes to rent. Even if she had the intention of sending money to Tru, it wouldn’t have been possible with Beverly raising the rent.
Fionna likes to talk about her childhood in a town in Trinidad called Laventille, where she grew up watching an aunt sew carnival costumes and her uncles preparing for band competitions—all of them dancing down a hill with their neighbors on carnival day into the Savannah. Each time Fionna talks about it, her eyes mist. She moves the greasy food around on her plate before she pushes it away. “I just need to work harder,” she says. “I want to send my family lots of nice things. I want to put my sisters through school, send my mother money to build a new house in Cascade, one ah di nicer areas in Trinidad, and pay fah my uncle’s eye surgery. All dis I want to do when I make enough money. Jus’ di other day, I did four double shifts to send my mother an’ sisters something to help wid expenses. Ah couldn’t tell dem dat ah don’t mek much at all. Jus’ so dey can say dat I made it.”
“An’ where does dat leave you?” Patsy asks, stirring her tea with a stained spoon.
“Nowhere,” Fionna replies, her light brown eyes looking tired. “Nowhere,” she says again, her voice distant, drowned in the chatter around them inside the diner.
18
ONE NIGHT THE FLOORBOARD LOOSENS IN BEVERLY’S ATTIC AND caves in. Patsy isn’t home when it happens. She had just gotten off her shift at the restaurant and arrived home when she noticed the hallway taped off with red tape, and her one suitcase already resting near the entrance. Beverly allows her to stay the night on the couch, but gives her only a day to find another place to live.
Fionna offers to take Patsy in, sharing a bed with her inside her cramped studio in Brownsville. The studio is so small that only one bed can fit. It might have been a walk-in-closet, which the owner turned into a single room, sealing off access to the bedroom it once belonged to and blowing out a wall to make a door on the opposite side. On the first night, Patsy couldn’t sleep, having never slept with a woman in the same bed before. They sleep side by side, not touching. Though not the most comfortable arrangement, especially since Fionna snores and jabs Patsy with her knees from time to time, they continue to share a bed.
Gradually, after the first month of living together, Patsy notices how it has begun to feel natural. At the Western Beef Supermarket where Fionna shops, they scour the coupons for sales together, making sure to pick up family-size cornflakes, tea biscuits, frozen meats, and frozen vegetables—since fresh vegetables are more expensive and go bad too quickly. Patsy learns that American supermarkets can be deceiving; it’s tempting to buy down the whole place when you see “sale” written in bold underneath, before realizing that everything adds up. Also, as undocumented, they aren’t eligible for food stamps or any government assistance. Because of that, Patsy and Fionna ration the little money they have for food, being mindful of what they’re spending by making lists of what they need for the house. They also rinsed a jam jar, which they now use to store loose change for the laundromat across the street where they take their clothes—something they did separately in the beginning until one morning Patsy found Fionna’s clothes with hers and washed them anyway. They split the rent—paying the landlord in cash—which allows for small pleasures like catching a movie together, ordering a cup of cappuccino at the diner next to their job, or combing through the aisles of Goodwill for cheap secondhand clothes, something else that Patsy never thought she’d ever do. In Jamaica, not even poor people would be caught dead wearing secondhand clothes. They’d rather forgo food and rent, and in some extreme cases their children’s school fee, to buy a nice dress or suit for church or a dance session—like the women across the gully by the tenement yards on Garrick’s Lane and Cooper Lane. These women took pride donning the most resplendent costumes for dances while their half-naked, runny-nose children ran around pulling on their unruly, uncombed hair. At the Goodwill, Patsy is surprised to find clothes in good condition, holding up shirts with all the buttons still on them, polyester skirts that haven’t been pressed to a shine from overwearing, and shoes that still have their soles.
“American people love t’row weh good t’ings, eeh!” she muses.
Days later, Fionna walks through the door with a small round
chrome Formica table. “Look what ah found!” Fionna says. “Americans really like to waste t’ings fi true!” She tells Patsy she had found their mattress in the same way too, leaned up on a tree, spotless.
FIONNA HAS A BOYFRIEND, ALRICK, WHO GREW UP WITH FIONNA in Laventille. One came after the other, since they couldn’t stand to be apart. Because Fionna is Catholic, they cannot live together until they get married—at least that is what Fionna maintains. Alrick works as a mechanic and lives in a basement in Sunset Park with four other men. He’s careful not to bring Fionna around his roommates—not with all those men crammed in one space. Patsy knew about him from her conversations with Fionna, but one day when Patsy was listening to the radio in bed, Fionna came home from working at her other job, with Alrick following at her heels. Since then he has been dropping by frequently. He has the body of a weight lifter and the smile of a cartoon villain.
Fionna doesn’t seem to mind his constant presence. Sometimes the three of them order Chinese food and watch movies Alrick buys on 125th Street from the peddlers near his job in Harlem. They watch movies like Fight Club, Sleepy Hallow, and The Sixth Sense—movies that make Fionna curl up next to Alrick on the bed and bury her face in his chest. Patsy looks up sometimes and catches Alrick’s gaze, even when he has his arms around Fionna. Occasionally Fionna and Alrick share a ganja spliff, which Patsy declines, excusing herself to take a walk, trying not to think of the crack pipes and needles on the sidewalks. Or sometimes she browses the aisles of the bodega downstairs where the cat rubs its tail on her legs. She knows to give the couple their privacy. And when she returns to the studio, Alrick is usually smiling, the whole studio smelling like sex. Patsy often waits for Alrick to leave so that she can go to bed and wake up early for another day of job searching before work at the restaurant.
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