“I’m not working for nobody,” Beatrice finally said. Judene and Shirley swapped glances. “This is my grandson,” Beatrice told her.
“Oh.”
Judene and Shirley looked down into their strollers, where tiny white fists were tightly clenched, pumping the air as if demonstrating their own silent protests.
“Ah neva mean to offen’,” Patsy said to Beatrice. “Is jus’ dat me hardly see people like us around here who . . .” Patsy’s voice trailed. There was nothing else she could say that would help the situation she had gotten herself into. But Beatrice, not one to let an opportunity pass by to brag, was generous with an explanation. “It’s my daughter’s baby. She’s a tenured professor at Barnard who lives four blocks that way.” She pointed to the handsome row of brownstones that led to Central Park. Patsy looked at the baby—his wild curly hair, his pale eyes, and his dark skin. Patsy knew then that she didn’t like Beatrice but simply tolerated her because her options for friendships weren’t many. A child, however beloved, is not good company.
But Beatrice, though from the same country, is from a different world than Patsy. While Patsy and the other nannies have to watch the babies like hawks on the playground—fidgety when they believe they have been talking too long in their circle, looking like a Caribbean Association meeting—Beatrice simply takes her time. Beatrice can leave anytime she desires and talk as long as she wants. Though she works for free, she’s the most rewarded, having the opportunity to live in her daughter’s house and care for a child who is a part of her, a baby who she will see grow and who will know her as Grandma.
Patsy is reminded every day, both by Beatrice and by the children Patsy has been caring for over the years, of what she’s missing out on by not raising Tru. “Girls. Dey stay with you forever,” Beatrice would muse. Patsy only listened, too ashamed to say she hasn’t even seen the development of her own daughter. She’s present, always, to see the first steps and hear the first words uttered by the children she has babysat, but has missed the most important firsts for Tru—her first period, her first crush, her first day of high school.
Patsy has not reached out to Tru since she sent her that Christmas card ten years ago. With much force, she severed all communication with her daughter, thinking it easier this way for both of them to move on. The absence of a mother is more dignified than the presence of a distant one. By now, Mama G or Roy might have convinced Tru that she had not come into the world through normal circumstances; had not floated for nine months inside a warm, liquid place, nourished by a tube connected to another human being. Once Patsy severed this lifeline, it shriveled and disappeared, leaving no trace of its existence.
It’s not like she didn’t try. During the first few years of babysitting, Patsy stood in line at the Western Union multiple times, willing herself to send something. But then, what good would it be without the explanation? The pages of apology? The promise of visiting soon, knowing that it would never be possible without papers? As time passed, it became harder and harder to justify. Though her courage disintegrated, she began to work overtime to save up money in that rusted cookie tin in her closet. An aspiration to send a barrel of gifts and money for Tru flourishes and thrives, more than the promise of reconciliation.
But lately Patsy has been plagued by guilt and regret more than usual. She’s spent nearly a decade taking care of other people’s children—children who won’t remember her when they become adults with their own families. She watches the other nannies break into smiles when they hear their children’s voices on the phone from across the ocean, then at home after work she eats a whole cake from the bakery on Church Avenue by herself, stuffing and stuffing, but still empty.
Beatrice stands beside her now, sighing. “Arthritis getting worse, an’ dis weather not helping.”
“Is dat yuh only worries?” Patsy asks her, shifting slightly to create more distance between them.
“Is a big worry, yes. A pain in di you-know-what.”
“Yuh taking anyt’ing fah it? There’s medicine fah everyt’ing here. Even medicine fah happiness,” Patsy says, remembering the commercial she saw with the happy, skipping couple who got that way because of a drug named Prozac. Patsy googled it before her free computer class at the library and read: “Medication improves your mood, sleep, appetite, and energy level and may help restore your interest in daily living.” Patsy went to the Rite Aid to ask for it and was told by the pharmacist that she couldn’t get it just like that without a prescription. She thought of the Indian doctor again and his nonchalance about her wearing a wig.
Beatrice sucks her teeth and rubs her leg. “Me nuh believe inna dem t’ings. Yuh know me is from di country.” It annoys Patsy that Beatrice chooses to speak patois with her. Though the woman is clearly from upper St. Andrew, a woman with means and status, she likes to speak patois to flaunt her country origins with the nannies she assumes are below her.
“Try some guinea bush,” Patsy says.
“Weh me aggo get dat from up here?” Beatrice asks.
“Dem sell dem on Flatbush Avenue, right on Caton. At dat market . . .” Patsy’s voice trails when she sees the look on Beatrice’s face. Beatrice wiggles her nose as if she smells something foul in the air. “You’d neva catch me in Brooklyn, m’dear.”
“What’s wrong wid Brooklyn?” Patsy asks, taking offense as though Brooklyn is her home. Her real home. Beatrice refuses to let go of the class thing from back home. In defense, Patsy wants to blurt out something smart, but cannot think of anything.
“Grandma, play!” the curly-headed boy says from his stroller, reminding Beatrice to let him out. Beatrice undoes the stroller and lifts the boy out. “Yes, boss man. There you go. Be careful!” she says after the running toddler.
“Vikter grow big, eh?” Patsy says, looking after Beatrice’s pretty grandson, the ice melting inside her. “Him g’wan be popular wid di ladies.”
“Yes, m’dear. Him already is. Dem grow so fast. Him is four going on forty.”
“Same wid Baby,” Patsy says, hating that she’s bragging about her employer’s child. “Three, going on thirty.”
The two women chuckle. “Ah remember when Michaela was dat age,” Beatrice says, her eyes blinking rapidly to rid themselves of the laughing tears. “Oh, she was a big one! Mouthy too! Every day me get a call from ah teacher. Dat was before—” A shadow comes over Beatrice’s face. Patsy stares at her, partly because she’s amazed at the sudden transformation in the woman’s face, and partly because Beatrice hardly talks about her daughter, much less mentions her name. She mostly focuses on her grandson, the way she now focuses on her hands clasped in front of her.
“Before what?”
Beatrice looks at Patsy as though surprised to see her standing there listening. “Nothing.” She sighs and straightens her shoulders. Patsy begins to gather her things, picking up a discarded snack cup and waving Baby down from the jungle gym. She’s grateful for the excuse of having to get Baby back home before his mother exits her study like Jesus resurrecting from the dead.
“Carry some guinea bush fah me,” Beatrice says, opening the pouch she carries around her neck. “Here is ten dollah. If it come to more, me will pay yuh di difference.”
Patsy takes the money, suppressing the urge to tell her to haul her fancy arse to Brooklyn to get it herself. “Yuh know yuh can always go to a real doctor fah di pain,” Patsy says instead. “You got di money fah dat.”
“No doctor in di world can relieve my pain,” Beatrice says, her melancholy reminding Patsy of Mama G and those older self-righteous women in the Pentecostal church, always in their long skirts, and always wearing pained expressions, taking pride in their suffering for Jesus. “But ah good bush tea can mek me forget it’s there,” Beatrice finishes.
“All right, we will talk tomorrow,” Patsy says, glad that at least she can still move about without physical pain. That much she has over Beatrice.
31
THE SUN IS SLOWLY SETTING BEHIND THE TREES IN
CENTRAL Park when Patsy walks out of Regina’s apartment building, bidding good night to Ransel, the Jamaican doorman who tips his hat goodbye as if everyone in the building is the governor general. Tired and still irritable, she walks down Central Park West to the subway station. As she passes people on the street, she barely glances up at their silhouettes. It’s not like when she first arrived in America, when it was fun to people-watch with Cicely. They would laugh like they did as little girls, trying not to point at someone dressed like a clown. “Is suh American people stay,” Cicely would muse. “Dey jus’ don’t care.” And it’s true. Patsy has seen some people wearing pajamas outside with curlers in their hair to go to the corner store or walk their dogs. They even wear jeans to work. Americans love jeans. Regina owns a pair of faded high-waisted ones that she wears every day with a poncho to work in her study.
Patsy makes her way into the subway station, her head weighted down by the gathering darkness above it, and she doesn’t expect to almost trip over a soul. When the person materializes in her periphery in a green robe and a crown, sitting on a subway bench, Patsy is not sure at all if she’s imagining things. The man is above-average height. She can tell from his knees, which stick out too much from the bench. She regards his dark, narrow face—the type one might see in old photographs of smiling uncles before chubbiness and a full beard set in—fixed in apology. His brown skin is the shade of cassava against the green robe.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Ah was jus’ stretching my legs. Ah didn’t see anyone coming.”
“Typical,” Patsy replies. “No one ever see me coming.”
“What dat supposed to mean?” the man asks. He cocks his head sideways, peering at her.
Patsy sees something in his eyes so powerful that it halts her. Any other time, she would have shrugged the person off and walked farther down the subway platform. But this time she stays, not wanting to go much farther. The man might be slightly demented, for all she knows. That might explain why he would be dressed in a Liberty Taxes costume when tax season doesn’t begin until January. It could be for Halloween, she reasons. But that is two weeks away. She has seen him before, she thinks. Or it could be someone else. They all look the same in that costume, parading all day long down city sidewalks January through April, Mondays through Saturdays, dressed as the Statue of Liberty. They work hard for their commission, since it’s off the books. Patsy wonders if they’re really successful in getting customers off the streets. In New York City, working off the books is as common as bodegas and dollar stores. People like Regina and Patsy’s other employers, who make their money the conventional way, seem to prefer filing their taxes in their own time rather than be coerced by a heavily accented immigrant in a Statue of Liberty costume.
The man is smiling at Patsy, raising one side of his mouth. “Yuh look like ah angel, wid dat face of yours.”
Patsy cannot help but smile, her annoyance evaporating. “Yuh mus’ be seeing t’ings. I’m far from it.”
“An’ dem dimples. You know what my granny used to seh about dimples? Dat they’re a mother’s lasting kiss.”
“Well, dat’s di biggest lie yuh granny evah tell, because my mother nuh know nuttin’ ’bout kisses ’less is Jesus’ foot.”
“She also used to seh dat they’re kisses from angels.”
“Yuh don’t have any other pickup line?”
“Who says I’m picking you up?” he asks.
Patsy’s face burns. Of course he’s not trying to pick her up. Why would she think such a thing? How many men have tripped over themselves in the last ten years to fuck her without remorse? Things have changed since living in America. Here, besides her daily touching in the mornings before getting out of bed, sex is an infrequent, transient occurrence—anonymous and dehumanizing, save for its ability to give her what she’s looking for—to feel whole in this place, invincible, less alone, though for only a few minutes. Under such circumstances, she can walk into a dimly lit seedy reggae club on Clarendon Road telling herself that she’s there for the music. (Try as she might, Patsy could never get herself to go near the lesbian club on Fourth Avenue with graffiti on the outside and a steel door where a tall, stocky white butch woman with spiky purple hair smokes a cigarette from the side of her mouth as she checks IDs.) After downing enough drinks, she looks up and sex is there, smiling at her across the club or ogling her backside out the door before bending her over in a cluttered room on Avenue D with her clothes still on, sparing her the embarrassment of a full glance. Afterward, when they disengage, they turn away in slight disgust, secretly relieved that they wouldn’t have to call or see each other again.
The man fiddles with a small gold crucifix pendant around his neck, looking down on his free hand as if his pride has already been trampled. He laughs, though his dark eyes are weary. “I’m sure yuh have plenty men trying to be wid yuh already,” he says.
“What yuh doing out here in dat costume?” Patsy asks him, changing the subject, for she knows he’s being kind.
He shrugs. “Is fah a performance.”
“You’re an actor?”
“You can call it dat. Isn’t dat what life is about? Pretending?”
The truth in the man’s words saddens Patsy. “It’s hard to pretend an’ not worry ’bout getting caught,” she says to the man.
He laughs. “Ah hear a beautiful accent. Yuh from yard?”
“Yes.”
“Where ’bout?”
“Pennyfield.”
The man’s eyebrows rise. “Oh?”
“What?”
“Ghetto girl.” He says this in the sweetest tone, reminding Patsy of the beginning of a calypso song. She notices a steel-pan player setting up his drum in the middle of the subway platform to play.
Patsy sucks her teeth. “It nuh mean nuttin’ up ’ere.”
“Nuh true?”
Patsy smiles, blushing in a way she hasn’t blushed with any other man but Roy. “Whatevah.”
“Really, though. Pennyfield is a dangerous area. Laborite territory.”
“Maybe to outsiders,” Patsy says in defense.
“I’m from Tivoli Gardens,” he replies.
“Oh. So is di pot calling di kettle black.”
“Touché.” He laughs. Patsy laughs too.
After a long pause, the man says, “Wish ah met you earlier.”
“Why is dat?” Patsy asks.
The man is staring at her, his gaze examining her face, caressing her skin, which warms under it. Something about the way this man looks at Patsy makes her think of Cicely—how she was able to look at her that way too and make her forget herself.
“Tell me yuh name,” he says. It’s a demand that is gentle in delivery.
“Patsy.”
“What is dat short for? Patricia?”
“Dat’s right.”
“Ah like Patsy.”
He smiles at this as if the sheer loveliness of the sound of her abridged name touches him. A light to behold.
“And what’s yours?” she asks.
“Barrington. Some call me Barry fah short.”
“I like Barrington bettah,” Patsy says.
He laughs. “My mother thought it sounded like a distinguished name. Like me was g’wan be somebody big wid a name like Barrington. Maybe di next prime minister of Jamaica or somet’ing.” He shrugs his shoulders, already rounded with defeat. A shadow lances his face. “She woulda roll in har grave to see me now, har only son, being a wutless brute.”
“Don’t say dat,” Patsy says.
“Ah came here back in ’92. Still have nothing to me name.” He turns to Patsy, his eyes moist with frustration. “Nothing a’tall. An’ now it’s too late, ’cause ah can’t work no more. Ah used to do construction.” He tells Patsy of his fall from a building on Madison Avenue. He fell fifteen feet and landed on his back while helping with the demolition of a building. His final task was the removal of a chandelier in the lobby when the marble bannister gave way and collapsed. “Can you imagin
e? Di one time ah ever get to hold somet’ing of any value.” He shakes his head. “Ah had to covah my own medical bills since ah don’t have any papers. Can’t even get a disability check. An’ yuh know di hurtful part? Ah can’t go back home. Can’t even sen’ money fi me nine children dem. Everybody know seh me is a failure.”
“Ah know what yuh mean,” Patsy says. “Ah can’t go back either. Ah don’t want to give my mother di satisfaction of calling me a failure to my face—to tell me dat is God’s punishment fah coveting all dat I t’ink can be mine too. Everyt’ing is about God to her. An’ if you’s not God, you’s Satan.” Patsy shrugs. “All I wanted to do was take back my life and . . .”
“And what?”
“Hope dat my daughter become a bettah woman. She’s bettah off being raised away from me, by har father.”
“Dat’s big of you to admit dat,” Barrington says. “Ah don’t get one bad vibe from you, but whatevah it is, don’t be suh hard on yuhself.”
“What’s di point of raising up a child in a world I couldn’t change?” Patsy chuckles. “Maybe dis is fate.”
As if on cue, the steel-pan man starts to play “Amazing Grace” on his drum. The Caribbean women waiting for the train hum and sway with their eyes closed, their rounded bodies like black birds perched on electric lines. They are probably on their way to a second job from a first job of cleaning, washing, cooking, ironing, wiping, or feeding. Barrington looks at Patsy as though he has already accepted her decisions. Not once does he blink or turn, even as the chilly breeze races across the platform. “How is it fate if yuh have control ovah it?” he asks.
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