Patsy

by Patsy (retail) (epub)

  On this particular night, Alrick doesn’t leave. Fionna gives him a blanket, and he lies on the floor, half of him under the bed. At one point during the night, Patsy wakes up to find him standing over her, panting, a musky smell rising from him. She inhales sharply, frozen as though the thing he has in his hand is a gun pointed at her. At first she thinks he might be sleepwalking. So, it’s all right. He’s just standing there, not really doing anything. Just holding it and panting. Patsy pretends to be asleep, not knowing how to move her limbs to cover herself with the comforter or nudge Fionna awake. She no longer knows how to breathe until Alrick’s rapid breaths and the warm liquid on her right thigh fill her with instant knowing and dread. She lies still, a bad taste in her mouth—rage mixed with saliva. And yet, her body doesn’t do the thing it ought to do. It doesn’t sit upright or let out a scream to express its shock and outrage. Absent is the urgency to do something, say something, feel something. She recalls another time and place on a night like this when she was frozen in the same way. She was ten years old when she first felt the mysterious weight bear down on her in the dark, and something forcefully slipping into her and bringing forth the most visceral pain. How hard it was then to shriek. Something prevented her from doing so, clamping her mouth; and she wasn’t sure if it was real. She was already familiar with the dark menacing thing in her periphery that no one else can see besides her; it always existed, even then, waiting. That night, as a child, the only thing certain to Patsy was Diana Ross’s voice crooning “Do you Know Where You’re Going To” from the old stereo, which had begun to collect dust inside the living room since Mama G no longer listened to the records that she and Uncle Curtis loved. Patsy let the incident—which might have been a bad dream—pass unrecorded, untold, a bad taste remaining in her mouth well after. It tasted like death itself—a death that numbed her body of its despair when she saw the bright red spot on the sheet. She was unable to place the unidentifiable loss of something that made all other losses bearable and all other invasions welcomed.

  Inside the studio, she waits impatiently for Alrick to zip himself up and settle under his blanket on the floor. Light disgust drips in the back of Patsy’s throat as the wet skim of Alrick’s pleasure hardens on her leg. Eventually she snuggles closer to Fionna and puts her arm around Fionna’s waist, her face pressed into the nape of Fionna’s neck. But Fionna, groggy with sleep, stirs and moves away, leaving Patsy to decipher in the dark whose back faces her: That of her roommate? Or of her mother?

  19

  TONIGHT, AS PATSY CLEANS THE BATHROOM MIRROR, FIONNA talks freely about finally getting to visit Trinidad if all goes well. It’s a slow night. The tip jar is almost empty. She tells Patsy that she’s almost done saving to pay an American gentleman to marry her so that she can get her papers. Patsy’s movement slows as she wipes water from around the sink. It’s the first Patsy is hearing about this gentleman. “Yuh serious?” she asks her roommate.

  Fionna pauses too, her eyes widening as she realizes that she’s said too much. Fionna looks over both shoulders to make sure no one enters the restroom before she says, “I didn’t want to mention it before I knew it would be possible. Him charging me only three thousand.”

  “Only?” Patsy gasps.

  “Some people pay more than dat,” Fionna replies. Then, lowering her voice, she says, “I pay in installments. Before yuh know it, I’ll have me papers.”

  Patsy frowns. “Dat’s a lot of money. An’ what about Alrick?”

  Fionna shrugs. “Di marriage is a business one. Alrick will be fine. He’s really supportive. He knows dat if I get my papers, then he will get his too. Eventually. It might tek a few years for me to get my citizenship, but once ah get it, I marry him an’ he can get his green card.”

  She’s reapplying bright red lipstick in the mirror and using one hand to brush down her hair. She’s meeting Alrick to go dancing after her shift is over. He hasn’t been over much since the incident the other night. Maybe it’s guilt keeping him away. Patsy is grateful, because with no money, she has nowhere else to go. However, the incident has bolstered her job-searching efforts so that she can afford her own apartment.

  “As soon as di papers come in di mail, I’ll file for a divorce,” Fionna is saying. “We got it all figured out.”

  “Yuh don’t have a problem wid dat?” Patsy asks.

  “If you want to stay here, yuh gotta do what yuh gotta do,” Fionna replies with a faint American accent. She purses her lips. “Maybe you should start looking for an American gentleman to marry too.”

  “What if I don’t want to do dat?” Patsy asks.

  “Then you’ll always be illegal, genius.”

  There’s that word again that Patsy hates—illegal. She’s no longer a person, but an illegal. An alien. She can’t understand why she’s deemed a criminal for wanting more, for being in a place where she can live out her dreams—even if it might take a while to achieve them.

  “You have to get rid of dat pride of yours,” Fionna tells her.

  “It’s not pride, it’s caution,” Patsy replies. “What if di man take advantage? What if him demand more money? Or worse, sex? What would you tell Alrick then? Whatever happen to marrying fah love?”

  Fionna throws her head back and laughs. This time she laughs so hard that spit flies from her mouth and sprays the bathroom mirror. She cleans it with the ammonia in the bottle she carries. “Love?” She continues to chuckle. When she sobers, she says, “We can’t afford to love in dis country. We not at dat place yet as immigrants where we can choose love. Like everyt’ing else, we tek what we can get—grab on to any lifeboat so we don’t drown in dis place call America. Love? Love won’t get we papers.”

  “Yuh saying yuh don’t love Alrick?”

  “Yuh not getting what I’m saying,” Fionna says, lowering the ammonia bottle. “People die to get into dis country. Yuh t’ink we have di luxury of choosing how to stay? So what if it’s a sham marriage dat might require sex? A likkle sex don’t compare to di shame of getting sent home wid jus’ we two long hands. Alrick knows dat. He knows we have to protect we self, an’ love small. ’Cause if we delude we self into thinking we got a choice, then we end up wid nothing. We end up wid broken hearts an’ hungry families. We only cotching here. One mistake an’ we gone. Dis is not our country, an’ immigration will do everyt’ing dey can to remind us of dat. We have neither di right nor permission to enjoy human things like Americans—vacation, rest, strolling in di park, di sunset. Who are we to do dat when we taking up space, taxes, an’ air, according to dem? Dey have all di power to punish us fah stealing from dem—fah daring to t’ink we can dream, much less love.”

  Patsy continues to wipe and wipe, even when there’s nothing left to clean. She remembers sleeping with Vincent during all those years of uncertainty, America on her mind. She did it with the ease of knowing she was getting something grand out of it. But to come to America—the place she expected to find freedom—only to go back to the bargains of the past is impossible. Fionna is now humming a song on the other side of the sink. Patsy knows that she hums when she’s sad about something. Patsy thinks about Fionna’s final words. Quietly she mourns, realizing that she must mutilate the very thing that sprang inside her, unearthing itself, reaching and reaching toward sunlight. She has only dealt with it alone, her neck bent over Cicely’s letters like they were roses that drew her face to them. It demanded solitude, this thing she nurtured. But Jamaican soil was bad for it. Certain plants can’t grow there, don’t belong there. American soil, she thought, would be better. But it’s best to bury it now. Cicely is right after all—that night in the basement when she told Patsy that she needed Marcus, yet could not admit to loving him. Patsy looks down at her pruned hands, stripping from the strong chemicals in the cleaning products. If she marries an American man for a green card, she wouldn’t have to do this for long. Mama G was right. For to enter into, and remain in, any promised land—be it Heaven or America—one has to conform. Or, in her own wo
rds, “Yuh mus’ suck salt if yuh want to succeed.” Yet Patsy cannot see herself going down that road. She might never be free.

  ONE NIGHT, PATSY HEARS FIONNA CRYING INTO HER PILLOW. Patsy had gone to bed early and never heard when Fionna came in from meeting the American gentleman for dinner. Fionna must have been extra-careful to not wake Patsy like she often did when she lifted the covers and lay down next to her in the bed. The digital clock on the microwave reads eleven forty-five p.m.

  “What’s wrong?” Patsy asks, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  Fionna smells like cologne—not the invasive musk Alrick wears, but a subtler scent that reminds Patsy of aromatic tobacco. She doesn’t respond to Patsy’s inquiry. Neither does Fionna turn toward her. Patsy refrains from questioning her any further. Instead, she spoons a sobbing Fionna, holding her tight until her sniffles die down; until the stars vanish and the sun shines through the thin white curtains.

  20

  HER FIRST CHRISTMAS IN AMERICA IS SPENT WORKING AT THE restaurant. Alan said she could get time-and-a-half by working the least popular shift. Privately, Patsy is grateful that not everyone in America celebrates Christmas. She can still walk into a bodega and pick up milk, turn on the television and see regular programming, catch a bus to work, and make extra cash. Even when she’s splitting rent with Fionna, she’s still living from paycheck to paycheck, unable to save money to send home to Tru. Patsy wanted to at least send something for Tru to buy herself a Christmas gift. She wonders if it’s still worth it to send all she has in order to give the impression that she’s doing well, when in truth she isn’t. She wants to be alone, wanting nothing of the pretense, the charade.

  On her way home from work, it starts to snow. Struck by the presence of snow—actual snow—she stops and tilts her head toward the sky, allowing the flakes to melt on her face. It looks to Patsy like shredded paper flung from the sky. It’s not as magical as the glittered snow she and Tru spent hours shaking just to see whirls of it fill the glass sphere. None of the emotions she expected to feel seeing snow for the first time are there. She thought this, like all her other firsts, would’ve been experienced with Cicely.

  Despite Patsy’s protest, Fionna decorates the studio with a fake table-size Christmas tree that she puts on a folding chair by the window. “Stop being a Grinch!”

  Christmas carols play from the radio on top of the microwave. Two Domino’s pizza boxes with just the uneaten crusts inside them and a large half-empty Sprite bottle sit on the small round Formica table that Fionna found on the street.

  “Cheers!” Fionna says to Patsy, holding up a glass of eggnog she bought at the bodega. The eggnog reeks of the rum she spiked it with. “What’s a good eggnog without liquor?” she asks Patsy when Patsy wrinkles her face. Fionna is sitting cross-legged on the floor, wearing a backless sparkly red blouse she donned for the occasion with tight black jeans. Patsy, who has on her long johns, reaches from the bed, aggravating the squealing springs, as she clinks her glass with her roommate’s.

  “I got somet’ing for you.” Fionna springs up and bounces to her purse. She pulls out a small gift-wrapped box. “Now yuh can’t say dat all Trinis hate Jamaicans,” she jokes.

  “Well, it depend on di gift.”

  “Open it,” Fionna chides. Her cheeks are reddened with rouge, same color as her lips, and her newly cut bangs are feathered just the way Halle Berry does hers in the Essence magazine Fionna bought just weeks ago.

  “Yuh didn’t have to,” Patsy says. She feels bad that she didn’t get Fionna anything.

  With more coaxing from Fionna, Patsy tears the gift paper and pries open the box. She pulls out a Statue of Liberty snow globe.

  “I saw it in Time Square when I was coming home from work and thought of you. I notice you have a thing fah snow globes.”

  “How did you . . .”

  “Caught you looking at dem at dat Dollar Tree store we went to buy curtains,” Fionna replies, reading her mind. “Since we in New York City, ah figure ah could get you a Statue of Liberty one.”

  Patsy stares at it. Turns it in her hands. Watches the snow fall on the green statue holding its torch. Tru’s face surfaces in the gleam of the glass.

  “Yuh all right?” Fionna asks Patsy after a while.

  Patsy puts on a smile and gestures with her free hand. “No, no—ah mean, yes! T’ank you. Ah really appreciate dis gift.”

  “Don’t seem like it.”

  “Honestly,” Patsy replies. “Ah couldn’t have ask fah a bettah gift.”

  But she feels alone in her struggle to try and balance herself, her emotions—at least to keep her past at bay. She’s beginning to get used to the notion of a future without Tru, her silence in this moment a scissor’s blade dragged along the ribbon of her past until it curls into a neat bow. She’s determined to be a new woman in America. Her gift to herself. This means she must do the work to separate her past from her present. Some days are better than others. Always, in the quiet of her thoughts, she wonders how Tru is faring without her. Is she angry? It’s fah di bettah, Patsy reminds herself, applying the thought like a soothing balm on a cut. Once ah start to save up money to send, she’ll know ah still care. Later, she goes to bed, lying next to Fionna on this silent night, restless at the sounds of children—imagined or real? she can’t tell—crying for their mothers.

  THE NEXT DAY, BOXING DAY, SHE SITS IN AN ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT Caribbean restaurant on Rockaway Avenue by herself and listens to other people’s laughter and chatter swirling around her. Fionna had invited her as her plus-one at a party thrown by one of the hostesses she met and hit it off with at her second job at Applebee’s, but Patsy declined. She wanted to be alone. She chews large chunks of macaroni and cheese, ham, and soggy string beans, and drinks a glass of watered-down sorrel, focusing on the white plate, silver utensils, and the blank Christmas card for Tru in front of her. She might start with, Merry Christmas, though by the time the card gets to Tru it will be way too late. She needs to communicate something other than a greeting. She wipes her hands in a napkin and writes:

  It’s snowing a lot in New York. The streets and sidewalks are white. I know you would have appreciated all this snow. I hope you’re being a good girl. I think of you often and will send you a gift as soon as I can.

  She considers adding an apology or something like: Sometimes when you love someone deeply, you sacrifice a lot for that person. It’s more selfish when you don’t consider what’s best for the person you love. One day you will understand. But Patsy thinks against this. She signs off with, Your mother, Patsy, with love.

  AND STILL, THREE DAYS INTO THE NEW YEAR PATSY IS RESTLESS.

  There’s an opening inside her that she can’t close. It’s this feeling of yearning that makes her go to Cicely’s place. She rides the number three train from Rockaway Avenue all the way to Crown Heights, the night egging her on. She could never do this in the daytime. She turns onto the quiet street. The night is starless and without a moon. There are no light posts on this street, just the arcade of bare trees casting dark shadows like elongated human fingers, broken and distorted. The lit windows of the austere brownstones are like embers of warmth where life stirs, where families gather below the high ceilings. Enveloped by the night, Patsy positions herself on the side of Brower Park facing Cicely’s brownstone. The lights are on in the living room, the chandelier glistening above the dining table. Though it is three days into the new year, the Christmas tree is still in a corner near the window, lavishly decorated with elaborate bows and glass ornaments. Patsy imagines the place still smelling like cinnamon, and the gifts are still piled around the tree inside big boxes, the wrappings undone.

  Yesterday she stood in front of a clothing boutique, attracted to the display of jewelry on fake tree branches—big, gaudy rhinestone earrings, some looking like chandeliers, with matching bracelets; twinkling gemstone pendants. The window was decorated with white frost and a sloppy drawing of a waving snowman. A dancing Santa Claus wiggled near the display sing
ing, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” Patsy had spotted a nice pair of ruby earrings inside a box. Staring at them, she found herself thinking of Cicely, though the small ruby earrings were nothing compared to the swanky jewelry Marcus buys her. Patsy was suddenly annoyed with herself; annoyed because Cicely still has that effect on her. Of all the people that she could get gifts for, she thought only of Cicely.

  Many years ago, Patsy gave Cicely gifts she bought from Woolworth in downtown Kingston that she could afford—scented powder with a soft puff, a compact with various shades of eye shadow, a smooth river stone painted blue, a cup with a rose on it.

  “Why yuh doing dis?” Cicely asked her the last Christmas they saw each other before she left.

  “Doing what?” Patsy asked.

  Cicely held up the box with the cup inside it, a smirk on her face.

  Patsy shrugged. “Because ah t’ink it’s nice.”

  “Yuh know yuh don’t like Christmas. Yet you’ve been giving me presents all these years. Who yuh fooling?”

  “Consider dem tokens of appreciation for our friendship,” Patsy replied.

  Cicely laughed her low, sweet, baby-girl laugh.

  The wind lifts suddenly and forces Patsy back to the present. Just as she tightens her scarf, about to turn away from Cicely’s living room window, Cicely comes into view. It’s as though Patsy willed her to do so, or she knows that Patsy is out there in the dark. Patsy admires her old friend’s effortless beauty in a long silk robe—how she pulls her hair up into a loose bun, revealing the soft profile of her face under the glow of the lamp by the mantel. A mixture of guilt and shame comes over Patsy, spying on Cicely this way. Like the rich white people in the city, Cicely and Marcus seem content to leave their curtains open and display evidence of their status—though Patsy gets the feeling that the white people, unlike Cicely and Marcus, display their things because it may have never entered their minds not to. In their world of haves, the have-nots don’t exist, and could not possibly materialize to steal from them.