Patsy

by Patsy (retail) (epub)

  “Pardon?”

  He shrugs. “Soun’ like yuh dun give up already.”

  Patsy looks down at the train tracks, the garbage, the cackling rats, the gutter. She lifts her eyes to Barrington’s face and sees Cicely’s. How Cicely with her bright skin, blue-green eyes, and long hair had chosen her when no one else did. You’re my home in this world. How she floated outside her own body, selfless in her desire to crawl under Cicely’s skin. All she ever wanted, and still wants—as insane as it sounds to admit this, shamefully, to herself—is Cicely.

  The green light flashes, signaling the arrival of another train into the station. The echo of the train arriving on its cold nerve of iron makes her teeth hurt. How many trains have gone by? Patsy hasn’t noticed. She likes talking to Barrington. She doesn’t know why those things tumble out of her mouth so easily with him. She watches as Barrington struggles to get up from the bench, using both hands to push himself up.

  “Don’t want to hold you up any longah,” he says.

  Patsy panics, wondering if she said too much. “You all right? Ah didn’t mean to tell yuh all dat,” she says, watching Barrington struggle to get up. She offers to help him, but he waves her off gently. “I can manage.”

  “Ah like talking to you,” Patsy says.

  “Same. But it’s time fah me to go,” he says. He winces in pain when he stands. “Had been like dis since di accident,” he explains. Every pinch of his nerve—he says—from his neck down, reminds him of that fall. He walks with a limp.

  “I’m half of a man. What would anyone want wid half of a man?”

  He looks at Patsy with those dark, pleading, weary eyes as if daring her to answer his question. They remind her of Uncle Curtis before she tasted the swig of rum on his breath. “You’ll be all right,” Patsy tells him. Because it’s the only thing she thinks to say in this moment.

  “No. You will be all right,” he says. “We all mek mistakes. Yuh mus’ forgive yuhself.”

  The steel-pan player switches to “How Great Thou Art.” Barrington seems mesmerized by the song. He looks like he’s about to cry, his sadness and pain fully visible to Patsy. She can’t make up her mind whether to keep her gaze on Barrington’s beautiful face, creased in exquisite pain, or to retrieve a piece of paper inside her purse that she can use to write her contact information. She rips a piece of paper from an envelope in her purse and scribbles her number with a pen. It would be the first time she’d ever been so bold with a stranger who hasn’t really shown sexual interest. And even if he had and she made herself available, he doesn’t seem like one to not call again. Suddenly she’s hopeful again in this city, deaf to the persistent car horns and sirens. Blind to the somberness of falling leaves in preparation for the coming winter, which would freeze over parks and rivers, turning everything still like glass.

  In this moment, failure doesn’t frighten her at all. Especially not with the tender, forgiving gaze of the man with skin the shade of cassava in the green Statue of Liberty robe on the platform. The steel-pan player continues to play. The velocity of the coming train scatters a group of pigeons, lifts the coattails of the humming day women, and snatches the paper from Patsy’s light grasp. The paper blows, sailing down the platform in the opposite direction. Patsy runs after it. She fetches it and turns in time to see Barrington leaping in front of the train—so graceful is his leap, his arms stretched out like falcon wings as he shoots forward in front of the oncoming train. It’s the first Patsy has ever seen anyone fly.

  32

  ON HER BIRTHDAY, TRU PICKS UP THE CARD HER MOTHER SENT her almost ten years before. The glitter has long rubbed off, but the words are still there: Your mother, Patsy, with love. For the first time since receiving the card, Tru wonders if this was a reminder for her mother too. She tries to see her mother’s face in those words—lines outlining her mouth, her eyes—but cannot make them out in the empty spaces. Tru folds the card carefully and places it inside her underwear drawer. She sits on the edge of her bed with her face lost in the shadow of the evening’s gloom. She can hear water gushing from a standpipe, the cackle of washerwomen, the crying of babies, young children playing, and the mongrel dogs barking at their laughter. Through the soot-blurred window of her room, she makes out Marva putting a pot of something on coals, though she is pregnant again. All the babies had died at birth so far. This is her third pregnancy in ten years—with twins this time. She should be on bed rest. Tru also makes out the mango trees weighted down by dusk and the hills above them where her mother once promised her a castle close to Heaven.

  She stares now at the dresses lying on the bed—the ones Marva gets made for her. The same seamstress makes all of Tru’s school uniforms too, smiling each time Tru gets measured and taking the liberty to touch her breasts. “Yuh getting to be a fully developed woman!”

  All the dresses the woman makes looks like they belong on doll babies, as bright and frilly and puffy as they are. Tru has to wear one to her grandmother’s house. “Don’t come ’roun here looking like no ragga-ragga. Is yuh birthday. We g’wan celebrate properly,” Mama G had said over the telephone. Every year Mama G bakes her a cake. Sighing, Tru peels her faded red T-shirt that reads PELÉ in bright yellow over her head and pulls down her knee-length soccer shorts, ignoring the scars, crisscrossed like nets, on her upper-right thigh. She draws up each leg on the stool by her bed to take off her shin guards, socks, and sneakers. With her right hand, she undoes the two safety pins under her left armpit to adjust the Ace bandage covering her breasts, loosening it just a little, catching a whiff of the musky scent of sweat. Her relieved sigh is muted by the sounds in the backyard. Each day she wraps the lengthy bandage that athletes use for chest-muscle strain slowly and reverentially around herself, the way the ancient Egyptians—according to Miss Frasier’s history lessons—might have buried their dead. She has done away with sports bras because of their inability to fully disguise the shape and size of her breasts. Tru wraps herself, knowing that she cannot endure the day without playing ball after school with the boys, kicking it with a mighty force over some lame goalie’s shoulders. However, such victory is often short-lived, since she knows that the next day she must return to her all-girls high school, to the pettiness of teenage girls, to the loneliness of feeling different from them, and to the curious faces of her teachers.

  She has acquired movements and habits that seem boyish to others, but are natural to her. Like crossing her legs with an ankle over a knee, or spreading them outright, since she’s always wearing soccer shorts anyway. “Close your legs, Miss Beckford. This is not a fish market,” her teachers at school often chastise. And the girls in the class titter; a few more than others, lighting up in ways she has seen women do for her father. But Tru pays them no attention at all.

  She considers herself one of the boys. Not that she feels being a girl is a handicap. That’s mostly in the minds of other boys—boys she plays with who might not know she’s a girl, even after several games. She wears her hair short in a low fade and sports her father’s shirts and her brother’s pants outside of school. Women and girls pause in restrooms when she enters. She doesn’t apologize or explain. She simply stares back at anyone who stares—an act that incites people to loudly suck their teeth and cuss her under their breath. “Ah wha dat?”—it’s a question that rarely offends Tru. She likes this ambiguity, feels secretly affirmed by it.

  Tru knows that while neighbors might talk, everyone is terrified to do or say anything to her, given that she’s Sergeant Beckford’s daughter.

  SHE FOLDS THE FADED RED T-SHIRT AND SHORTS TO WASH LATER, douses her chest area with lavender-scented talcum powder since she has no time to bathe, then puts on the yellow dress her grandmother insists she wears. Standing in her dress in front of the mirror, she feels like she does not belong to herself, imprisoned by the lace sleeves, the thin bow in the front, and the sewn-in petticoat that swirls about her, especially in the backside. You can do this, she reminds herself, as she does every morning befo
re school in her blue tunic, white socks, and black oxfords.

  Inside the kitchen, she grabs a tangerine. Kenny is in the living room, his technical drawing homework spread out before him on the tile floor. He raises his head when he sees her. “What yuh doing in a dress?” he asks, his mouth fixing into a grin, one she wants to slap off his face. At sixteen, he has grown into a lanky boy, his limbs longer than his midsection, his head small, his features lacking coherence as though each part belongs to someone else. He looks like a boy always cowering, always waiting on his father to deliver a cuff to the head. Most of the beatings and shaming Kenny gets from Roy have to do with the fact that he’s not as fast or as strong as Jermaine, Daval, or even Tru.

  “Borrowed one from yuh closet,” Tru replies to her brother. “Tell Marva I’ll be back before dinner.”

  Kenny stares at her, his face creasing into a meanness usually reserved for his bullies and Roy. Had his pupils been lighter she would’ve seen a hint of green in them—as green as his Calabar High School necktie. “Why yuh don’t tell har yuhself?”

  “Tell har what?” Marva is standing in the entrance to the hallway, looking like the living room sofa itself in a cream floral dress, her arms akimbo on her wide body, always big with babies inside it.

  “I’ll be back before dinner,” Tru says to Marva, who is wiping sweat from her upper lip. “Jus’ going to see Mama G.” The same shadow that crossed Kenny’s face falls over Marva’s too, transforming it.

  “I see,” Marva says, regarding Tru’s dress, her eyes briefly appraising it before dimming again. “Thank God fah dat grandmother of yours. Only she can talk some sense in you, mek yuh stop dressing like those straggly boys yuh keep company wid.”

  “They’re my friends.”

  “Ah don’t care what dey are.”

  Since Jermaine and Daval moved out—Jermaine finding work as a desk clerk in one of the hotel resorts on the North Coast, and Daval finding work as a store manager at a Digicel store in Hanover where his girlfriend lives—Marva has been focusing all her energy on policing Tru and Kenny. She has always been protective of Tru, mindful of everything she does. It’s as though she has fully taken on the role of mother without Tru’s consent. Things fell apart between them when Tru started to rebel. She stopped listening to Marva’s instructions—whether to wash dishes, help her prepare dinner, go with her to the market, or iron her father’s shirts. The more Tru spent her energy trying to convince Marva that she was wasting her time using Tru to act out her fantasy of having a daughter, the more Marva showed Tru love and compassion. But Marva didn’t have unlimited patience. And the more Tru questioned and pushed, the more tangled her emotions grew inside. It spread, tainting her responses to Marva with vitriol. Soon Marva’s gentleness became swift outbursts of frustration that seeped into all of their interactions.

  “Mama G waiting. She doing somet’ing nice fah my birthday,” Tru says in a quiet voice.

  Marva raises her eyebrows, her surprise obvious. Either she has forgotten Tru’s birthday, or is shocked that Mama G has organized something special for Tru. Roy didn’t say anything to Tru either on his way out of the house this morning. Usually Tru’s birthdays come and go like any other day. She stopped celebrating birthdays the year her mother left. So when Mama G called, telling her to come on this day for a treat, Tru remembered again how special this day should feel.

  “Well, happy birthday,” Marva says, her words like gravel. “At least you got something.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “Nobody ever give to Marva. Everybody jus’ take, take, take! I guess I’m jus’ a nobody expected to raise other people children an’ get nothing in return. What am I supposed to be running here? A foster home? A charity?”

  In all these years, Marva has never referred to Tru’s mother by her name. Marva believes wholeheartedly that Mama G is getting something from Tru’s mother, which isn’t true at all. As Marva talks, Tru senses Kenny’s silent agreement, though he’s looking down at his homework intently. Or maybe he’s ashamed of the insults—so used to fending them off himself. Tru takes it, since she knows Marva would rather say this to her than to Roy.

  “ . . . As if ah don’t have enough trouble trying to feed my own. Now ah got two more coming. Well, dis time it g’wan be different. Yuh hear? Oonuh not g’wan kill off me next babies dis time! Me not putting up wid people an’ dem indiscretion anymore. I’m not about to lose my babies worried ’bout how some people could be so cold an’ heartless—jus’ dump dem pickney off on you an’ g’wan ’bout dem business. No, sah. Dat not g’wan continue. Dat trifling woman don’t even call to see if har own child alive or dead. What kinda somet’ing dat?”

  When Marva gets around to talking about Tru’s mother and Roy’s other women, Tru knows it’s time to go. She pushes past Marva toward the front door that opens to the veranda as the sun readies itself to slip between the sloping hills. It casts a dust-yellow haze over Pennyfield.

  “Where yuh t’ink yuh going?” Marva says, following her outside with a wobble. “Me nuh done wid yuh yet! You an’ yuh father cut from di same cloth. Both ah oonuh ungrateful like . . .”

  But Tru doesn’t stop. Not that there will be any repercussions. Marva doesn’t love her enough to discipline. Tru decides that Marva is too deeply involved with the changes taking place in her body, giving herself up to them, perhaps finding perverse gratification from the perpetual sacrifice and attention to care. So when Marva says, “Is who you t’ink you is?” Tru snaps, “I’m not him.”

  TRU CROSSES OVER THE GULLY TO WHERE THE HOUSES LOOK more like shacks with zinc fences. Ras Norbert is sitting under the lignum vitae tree on Walker Lane, chanting, “Believe me! Believe me not!” He’s by himself, with his brooms surrounding him like an inanimate audience, their shadows stretched to infinity. “All di riches yuh can only dream . . .”

  Tru waves at him, “Evening, Ras Norbert!”

  His eyes, pale blue with cataracts, dart in search for her, his pupils only making out her shadow. “Evening, bless-ed,” he says, returning his gaze toward the swollen violet clouds in the sky as the last remnant of sunset fades. “Walk good.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Miss Maxine and Miss Foster are talking to each other, Miss Foster leaning against Miss Maxine’s gate. They stop talking when they see Tru.

  “Barrel come yet?” Miss Maxine says, giving Tru a toothy grin. Miss Maxine breeds fowl for cockfighting, which happens every Saturday evening. A crowd gathers right by the big tree where Ras Norbert usually sits. The roosters, egged on by spectators hungry to see blood, begin moving their feet, raising dust from the dry earth, their beaks open like sharp scissors ready to snatch the other’s jugular. The people watching laugh and clap, slap their knees and stomp their feet, shouting, “Kill ’im! Kill ’im! Kill ’im!” For deep down—under the shrill cries, under their weary eyelids, under the frayed clothes, under the tension of black skin and muscles and veins, under the tongues where saliva pools to stir up the taste of victory—Tru, who sneaks out sometimes to watch the fights, senses pain and frustration at the monumental indifference of the surrounding hills. It’s that thing she cannot see, but senses in the shadow of their flared nostrils, their curved mouths, their carved, lean faces, and eyes with no light in them, just two cleanly bored holes.

  One win could mean not waiting for handouts from Pope, who also takes care of their women and children, or from the politicians that come around, not bothering to ask their names, much less offer them jobs. One win could recover their manhood. When a bet goes wrong, men draw knives at each other. Any man—be it his father, brother, cousin, neighbor, or best friend—in the way of a win is a dead man. Last time when such a fight happened, Miss Maxine had kicked off her house slippers, stood on the D&G crate under the tree, and shouted above the chaos: “If me see one ounce ah human blood inna dis place tonight, me swear ’pon me granny grave ah Dovecot dat me g’wan stop cook fi all ah ’oonuh ole hungry neaggar! Oonuh g’long an’ kill e
ach other an’ see if me joking!” The men instantly lowered their knives and the crowd dispersed.

  “What yuh mother sen’ come besides dat nice frock yuh wearing?” Miss Maxine asks Tru in a mocking voice.

  Tru smiles, despite her annoyance. “She didn’t send anything.”

  “She didn’t send anything,” Miss Maxine mimics. “See what me talkin’ ’bout, Foster? Is dat good school making she soun’ suh proper.”

  Tru bows her head. The last thing she wants to do is offend her elders with her speech. But she can’t help it. Her headmistress, Mrs. Rosedyl, and the teachers at school have gotten into her brain. Every time Tru slips into patois, she hears, “Ladies! Where are your manners?” Tru swallows and corrects herself for Miss Maxine. “Ah mean Mama neva sen’ nuttin’ come, ma’am.”

  “Yuh too lie,” Miss Maxine says, pushing up her mouth and sneaking a look at Miss Foster, who nudges her. “Not even ah piece ah frock she can sen’ come fah me?” Miss Maxine prods. “Me used to be har friend.”

  “Maybe next time,” Tru says, making her way inside Mama G’s yard. Tru makes a mental note never to wear anything new around here again. No one ever made a peep about her mother in all these years. The fact that her mother is on their mind as soon as they think she sent Tru something infuriates Tru.

  “Patsy reach America an’ treat us like strangers. Nuh true, Foster?” Miss Maxine says, scratching her arm as if her grudge has festered into mosquito bites.

  Miss Foster nods, her mouth returning to its usual upside-down U. “Same suh. She g’long like she neva know we. She mus’ be up dere living life.”

  Tru wants to scream at the women. How dare they pretend to know more about her mother than she does? Had she been their age, she would’ve told them about themselves—Miss Maxine, who never knows how to keep her head full of Bantu knots out of people’s business; and Miss Foster, who keeps all those children locked up inside her house like a zoo where strangers can come and gawk at them—opening their mouths, squeezing their cheeks, prodding their bellies.