Patsy

by Patsy (retail) (epub)

  “Di real hell is allowing dis place to eat you alive,” Fionna says to Patsy when she notices that she has been lying in the same spot on the bed inside their studio from sunup till sundown. How many rotations has the sun gone through since Patsy climbed in the bed that night after seeing Cicely? She slips in and out of sleep. She wakes to Fionna shaking her.

  “Patsy. Patsy? Patsy!”

  It reminds Patsy of her daughter’s voice—how it would pull Patsy from the lips of a deep sleep. Here she is in the midst of it, hating it, terrified of it, and yet her only thought is of Tru. During those years, it was the anticipation of going to America to see Cicely that had kept Patsy alive. But what is keeping her alive now? Where will she find the strength that would protect her from the spells? How can she live, knowing that she lost Cicely to her American dream? It’s then that what Fionna had said about not having the luxury of choosing love makes sense to Patsy. That’s what it all comes down to—choice. When has she ever been given a choice? Never. She was never given the choice to say no the first time her legs were pried open, never given a choice to rid her body of the grievance she had to carry for nine months, never given a choice to look at another woman and allow herself to be carried by the feeling without blood, bright red on glistening glass, sticking to her like shadow. And now. Now the promise of life comes with accepting the fact that she will never have a choice.

  “Come . . . let’s go,” Fionna says. “Ah told Alan you was coming in tonight . . . dat you was running a high fever, but dat yuh all right now. Yuh want to get fired?”

  “I can’t,” Patsy tells her.

  “What yuh mean, yuh can’t?” Fionna sits on the bed, her weight pressing down on the mattress. She puts her arms around Patsy. “You’ve been like dis for a week. Dis is not a place to feel sorry fah yuhself, yuh hear?”

  “Ah can’t take dis . . .”

  “Can’t take what? Come. You mus’ push through whatevah going on wid you. We in dis together. I’m sure yuh didn’t come to dis country to die.”

  There’s a difference between wanting to die and not wanting to live. She doubts she can explain this to anyone. She’s tired of dealing with the dark thing mocking her as a nameless, faceless interloper on foreign soil. Before, it had mocked her as a helpless secretary trapped inside a cubicle, an unwilling mother with no way out but inside her dreams. Patsy cannot afford to go back to that either. She wishes to confide this to Fionna. But it would be one less hassle if she can make Fionna go away and leave her alone. So, when Fionna tugs the sheet from Patsy, Patsy delivers the blow. “Ah had sex wid Alrick.”

  A hush falls inside the room when Fionna steps back. As she glances up at Fionna, she sees the vulnerability there in her eyes, the exposed vein in her neck. All that is preventing Patsy now from pulling the blade with her tongue—telling Fionna how Alrick had pressed her up against the wall, right there where she stands looking down on her, and fucked her good and hard—is the pity she sees on Fionna’s face. Patsy expects her to lash out, hit her, tell her to leave, but she doesn’t. Then, quietly, shamefully, Patsy says, “I’m sorry.”

  Fionna only laughs, clasping her hands together to cup her mouth. It sounds genuine, like that of a woman who has known every secret there is to know and has pitied the person thinking she could be so naïve. Patsy stares at her, puzzled at the sight of the tearful gratitude her confession has brought to her roommate. The dark cluster breaks and falls apart in her panic.

  “Girl, please,” Fionna says. “Is dat why yuh down on yuhself? Dat man would screw anyt’ing in a dress. Dat’s jus’ how dey are, especially Caribbean men. Don’t you know dat? Your men, especially. Chile, please.”

  “So you knew?” Patsy asks.

  “No. But I know his dick an’ what it’s capable of.”

  “An’ yuh okay wid it?”

  “Look here . . . ah judge di penis different from di man. Why hate a man for his faults? Who he loves and who he fucks are separate. We’ve been friends for longah than we been lovers. Dat’s di only thing keeping us together. Comfort. I’m glad you told me. Ah consider you a friend too. I know dis might soun’ foolish, but him weakness don’t mek him a bad person. Neither does yours. When yuh fall in love wid yuh best friend, it’s different. You accept everyt’ing ’bout dem. Di good, di bad, an’ di downright ugly.” Sitting back down on the bed, Fionna strokes Patsy’s arm. “Maybe yuh should talk to somebody.”

  “Somebody like who?”

  Fionna shrugs. “Someone yuh can confide in. Someone who can help you. Like a professional. ’Cause rather than watch you do such a piss-poor job at slowly killing yuhself, I’d rather kill yuh myself,” she jokes.

  “I jus’ . . .” Patsy’s voice trails.

  “Who hasn’t thought about giving up?” Fionna asks, reading her mind. “Dis place don’t make it easy for us. Is like walking ’pon hot coal. At least in sleep, we can dream. But di weirdest t’ing ’bout life is dat it’s only understood backward. Yuh neva know what’s at di end ah dis tunnel waiting fah you, sweetheart. Now come get dressed. We got life to live an’ rent to pay.”

  PATSY ARRIVES EXTRA-EARLY, JUST AFTER THE DWINDLING lunch-hour crowd and a little before happy hour and the arrival of patrons coming for dinner. She’s there to apologize to Bernie for missing so many days at the restaurant. The place is bustling as usual. A loud voice bellows from the kitchen when Patsy passes by on her way to Bernie’s office. “What’s di mattah wid oonuh? Dis is a Dutch pot! How oonuh call oonuh self cooks if oonuh nuh know dat? Blasted dunce-bats!” The patois is spoken loudly, as though it never entered the speaker’s mind to be ashamed of it in America with all these white people around overhearing it. It must be the new chef that Fionna told Patsy about. Ever since he was hired, there had been shouts and fights in the kitchen. Serge is his name. Bernie’s first real Jamaican chef after a searing review in the New York Post by a Jamaican columnist about Peta-Gaye’s lack of authenticity. Bernie must have jetted to Kingston, snatched Serge from the trenches of Delacree Road, Denham Town, or even Pennyfield, for all Patsy knows, brushed him off, and hired him.

  Alan scoots out of Serge’s way when he emerges, a tall, dark, sturdy man in a white apron. “Spices! Ah need real spices!”

  “Arrogant son of a bitch,” Alan quips under his breath, rolling his eyes as Serge approaches him. “Bernie wants American-friendly foods on the menu,” Alan says to the angry chef.

  “An’ oonuh call dis a Jamaican restaurant? Kiss me ass,” Serge barks.

  Alan bristles.

  Serge bold-steps his way behind Alan, who hightails it toward Bernie’s office. Serge slows when he sees Patsy. “How are you, beautiful lady? Pardon my behavior.”

  The anger that sparked his voice earlier instantly cools. She smiles, heartened by his friendliness. She greets him, feeling herself blush, aware of his widening grin.

  “Hello,” she replies, almost forgetting why she’s standing at Bernie’s door.

  “Another Jamaican, I see!” Serge extends his hand and Patsy shakes it. He’s such a gentleman, she thinks, not at all what she pictured after Fionna’s description of what he said to her last week: “How yuh feel ’bout mek’ing me baby, sweetness?” Fionna told Patsy that had he not been the chef, she probably would’ve slapped him. Patsy didn’t say to Fionna then that she knew just the type of Jamaican man she assumed Serge to be—the type who would openly flirt with any woman, from the Queen of England to a toothless homeless lady, expecting their adoration. His arrogance would draw him from the kitchen to greet the customers as they eat his food, laughing haughtily as they praise his curried goat, rice and peas, oxtail stew, and ackee and saltfish, and with wicked mischief say something like, “Jus’ wait till ah open me own. Dere’s more weh dat come from.” Now he simply bows to Patsy like he was trained at Buckingham Palace and says, “Aftah you, madam wid di cute dimples. Can I call you Dimples?”

  “My name is Patsy.”

  “I like Patsy too. All right, then, Miss Patsy Dimpl
es. Aftah you . . .”

  She cannot help but smile as she steps past him while he holds the door for her.

  “Wait, wait, what are you doing?” Alan asks from behind Serge. “We need to settle this once and for—”

  Serge turns to him sharply and says, “Shut yuh raas mouth! Yuh got no respec’? Ladies first! An’ when me seh ladies, me nuh mean you!” Leaning in slightly while holding the doorknob, he says to Bernie, “We will talk when yuh done.”

  Patsy thanks Serge and closes the door behind her. Bernie’s office is a box with collages of reggae and rock bands, which reminds Patsy of the insides of a teenage boy’s room on American television sitcoms, complete with an oversized poster of a beautiful woman. In this case it’s the famous photograph Patsy has seen on every Jamaica Tourist Board billboard back home of the coolie model who resembles Cicely, emerging from a river, hair slicked back, wearing a wet see-through T-shirt with JAMAICA spread across her breasts. Patsy looks away from it and focuses on Bernie, who is leaned back in his chair with his feet on his desk.

  “I’m surprised those two knuckleheads didn’t run you over in the hallway,” he says, bristling with sarcasm and annoyance. There’s nowhere for Patsy to sit, so she remains standing. “Someone finally decides to show up for work,” he continues.

  “I was sick.”

  “Fionna told me. Do you have a doctor’s note?”

  “Ah don’t have one, sah,” Patsy says quietly. “Is not somet’ing doctors can treat.”

  Bernie sighs and takes his feet down. “What were you sick with, Patsy?”

  “I—I was haunted.”

  “What?” he asks, his face a mesh of questions. In just moments it transforms from concern to unease to suspicion. Perhaps for the first time, he’s regretting his decision to hire real Jamaicans. These people are crazy! she can almost hear him thinking.

  “Haunted?” Bernie asks. “By what?”

  Patsy knows better than to trust him, but she’s used up all her energy in just getting here. She doesn’t have the strength to lie. So she tells him.

  “Devil’s cold,” he says when she tells him the name Mama G has referred to it as. “Is it contagious?”

  “No.”

  “What are the symptoms of this . . . uh . . . Devil’s cold?”

  She discloses her experiences with the dark thing that haunts her. How it comes so close sometimes that she can feel its cold breath breathing down her neck; how, like gas in the belly, a sore throat, or arthritis pain, one has to let it run its course.

  “That must be something. How can you prevent it from happening again?” he asks, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. She gets the sense that he’s humoring her, his mouth twisted to the side as though he’s trying to suppress a laugh.

  “Ah can’t prevent it. Is in we blood.”

  “Oh, really. So, it happens anytime it wants, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  Narrowing his eyes, his displeasure more apparent, he delivers the blow. “Then you’re fired. See Alan for your final pay. If you’ll excuse me,” he says, getting up and heading toward the door behind her, “I have a business to run. A real one.”

  Patsy retreats, an unsheathed sword jabbed in her chest. She stumbles forward after him to explain further when he opens the door, but stops herself when she realizes there is nothing more she can say. It’s too late, her defeat certain.

  She opens the door and pushes past Serge and Alan going at it in the narrow pathway near the kitchen—Serge calling Alan a battyman and Alan calling Serge a poor excuse for an ape and that he should go back to whatever jungle he came from, Bernie in the middle, preventing them from killing each other. “You’re both animals!” he yells, red-faced. None of them see Patsy pass them by. None of them see her disappear.

  23

  ONE EVENING TRU COMES HOME FROM SCHOOL TO SEE MARVA stunned and colorless inside the living room, her oblique eyes staring out at nothing in particular. She’s wearing one of those big shapeless dresses she’s taken to wearing, her hands on her belly. Roy is there at her side, rubbing her shoulders. Shadows invade the room, moving up Marva’s limp body and slanting across Roy’s eyes as he whispers, “Maybe it’s fah di best. God know we can’t afford another mouth to feed.” His words seem to desecrate something fragile, which unleashes Marva’s hysteria.

  “She wasn’t jus’ another mouth. She was ours!” she cries softly.

  WEEKS LATER, THREE WOMEN COME TO THE HOUSE. THEY’RE Marva’s sisters. Women with strong backs and broad shoulders like Marva. Women who wear head-wraps and long skirts, smelling of herbs and ripened fruit. Women who squat in the backyard to dig a hole and murmur something to the earth. They took the country bus all the way from Saint Mary. Their presence breaks the disquiet inside the house. One of them—the older one with the eagle-eye and ash-gray skin, whom Tru’s brothers call Aunt Cherry—is especially scary to Tru. Marva doesn’t come out of the room as often, and when she does, she appears lost, walking around in her nightgown glossy-eyed and dazed. The women talk in hushed tones as though their voices were metal and Marva were glass. Tru presses her ear to Marva’s bedroom door to listen.

  “Hush. Nuh cry, Marva.”

  “He—him seh him nuh want another one.”

  “No. No. Let him know what yuh want.”

  “He don’t—”

  “Him only talking a bag ah t’ings. Him will come aroun’.”

  “Him neva even care dat we lose di baby . . .”

  “Of course him care. But him is a man. Man nuh show feelings like dat.”

  “But our baby . . .”

  “It nuh mean yuh can’t try again.”

  Marva says something inaudible and Tru has to press harder against the door to hear.

  “How yuh mean what if yuh can’t ’ave another one? Stop talk like dat, Marva. Is not di end ah di world. Jus’ be grateful fah di t’ree boys yuh already ’ave.”

  “But a girl . . .”

  “Yuh can try again.”

  “Ah don’t know. Him ’ave him dawta here. To him, dat’s enough.”

  “Hush yuh mouth an’ don’t talk like dat. What you give him should be enough too.”

  “I can’t figure out why him would . . .”

  “Talk, baby. Francine, get har another piece ah tissue.”

  Marva blows her nose and continues, her voice tremulous with anger. “Ah can’t figure out why him would do such a t’ing. Bring har here without my consent, then tell me ah can’t ’ave one of my own.”

  “Well, what can I say? Dat woman know what she was doing when she put crosses ’pon yuh. Why else would she leave a child like dat?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. Di likkle girl is sweet. But she’s not . . .”

  Marva starts to cry again.

  “Hush, baby.”

  “Sure, di likkle girl is sweet. Di Devil is also sweet before yuh find out seh him is di Devil. Har mother leave har here for a reason. What ah want you to do is protect yuhself.”

  “From who?”

  “Dat girl’s mother.”

  Dread seeps into Tru’s blood. Tru imagines that it’s the older sister with the eagle-eye doing all the talking, poised at Marva’s bedside like a john-crow hovering over death on a coconut tree in her black clothes.

  “Dis will help wid di evil dat girl’s mother will bring.”

  “Stop talk foolishness, Cherry,” Marva hisses.

  “Remembah wah Mama used to say? Tek time mash ants an’ yuh fin’ him belly. Here—dis mixture will get rid ah any Obeah spell. Rub it all ovah yuhself morning, noon, an’ night. Pray wid it too. Put a likkle in yuh tea in di morning. An’ in his tea too. Don’t rest it anywhere. It mus’ be ’gainst yuh body at all time. Only carry it ’roun yuh waist. Don’t put it anywhere close to yuh heart ’cause it could backfire an’ yuh unborn child might become di unlucky one. In di meantime, ah g’wan pray fah you.” They pray, rebuking the Devil in the same way Mama G does, casting out spirits and dousing every
sentence with the blood of Jesus. “Father God, we covah dis house in di precious blood of Jesus. We covah our sistah, Marva, in di precious blood of Jesus an’ smite Satan an’ him army. Holy Jesus, sen’ down yuh angels in dis bakkle field. Cast out di evil in dis house. Let our sistah Marva know dat evil shall not claim victory ovah us, even when it come as sheep.”

  These words spoken by the women become living things to Tru. They charge the air with an unrelenting force that seems directed at her. The unceasing assault sends Tru running out the door—disturbing the sleeping mongrel dogs and squawking fowl. The words chase her up the ackee tree, sharp-edged wings flapping down, growing louder and louder. And as she sits there, struck silent, the day changes. Beyond the leaves, the sun bleeds across the evening sky.

  24

  PATSY ARRIVES AT THE ADDRESS SHE SAW IN THE VILLAGE VOICE. Magic Maid had an opening. She eagerly scribbled the Bushwick Avenue address on a piece of paper. Fionna frowned when Patsy told her about the interview.

  “Ah heard bad things about dem,” Fionna said while filing her nails in bed.

  “Like what?” Patsy asked, watching her.

  “Dey pay chump change an’ only hire Spanish women. One of the waitresses at Applebee’s used to work fah dem. She quit aftah one week.”

  Patsy takes her chances, showing up at the old brick building, noticing the broken window on the ground floor where a thin red curtain flaps out, then in; the rusted fire escape with a pair of old sneakers hanging from it; and a yelping noise that sounds like a tiny dog or a young baby or both. People are speaking Spanish above the noise. On the ground, snow has turned to gray sludge. Patsy steps over the mound and enters the building. She hurries up the dark steps and down a narrow hall toward the drab-looking door with a peephole and 5A plastered on it, the A slightly peeling off. As she lifts her hand to knock, she notices that the door is already cracked open. A woman’s voice comes through the crack; the rapidness of it all, flung against the door and along the orange walls of the narrow hallway, gives Patsy pause.