“I was right about you,” Patsy jokes after the waiter leaves.
“How so?”
“You being vegetarian.”
Claudette laughs out loud. “I plead di fifth.”
“Hm.”
“I cheat sometimes.”
“Really.”
“Shh . . . don’t tell anyone.”
Patsy laughs. “Don’t worry. Yuh secret safe wid me.”
Easily, they slip into conversation about Jamaica and homesickness and the crosses employers they work for here in America, and the obligation to send things back home to family. Patsy learns that Claudette has no children of her own, but helps to raise her sister’s two children, a boy and a girl. “We’re a tight-knit family,” she says, playing with the rim of her water glass. “Dey love me—those two. Ah visit dem in New Jersey every chance ah get. Ah was hoping to see dem on Thanksgiving dis coming week, but dey going to my brother-in-law’s family in Atlanta. Ah try to get my sister to move to Brooklyn, but she like it bettah over there. Plus, Jersey have bettah public schools.”
“How old are di children?” Patsy asks.
“Di boy is eleven. Di girl is nine,” Claudette says.
“Nice,” Patsy replies.
“What about you?” Claudette asks. “Do you have children?”
Patsy dabs the sides of her mouth with a napkin. Silence falls across the table as Claudette awaits a response. Two men clad in heavy black coats walk into the restaurant and wait to be seated. Patsy moves around her water glass. “Ah have a dawta,” she finally says.
“How old?”
“Sixteen.”
“Is she di one yuh sending di barrel for?”
Patsy nods.
“We ship an average of one hundred and forty barrels a day. Most of dem parents shipping to children back home.”
“Dat’s a lot . . .”
“Who yuh telling?” Claudette laughs. “Keeps me employed.”
“Do you get a lot of mothers?”
“Yes.”
“Hm.”
“Have you started filling up di barrel you bought?”
“Ah wish ah knew how . . .”
“Like ah said, it takes time. Sixteen is a tough age. It’s when hormones start churning. My mind tell me dat yuh dawta might like makeup. Now dat she might have a likkle boyfriend. Teenagers are funny. Di more yuh shelter dem, di worse dey rebel. My poor mother didn’t know what to do wid me an’ my sistah at dat age. Dat woman had enough strength fah two men. Bent us in shape real quick, though.”
The thought of Tru as a teenager singes Patsy in a way she hasn’t prepared for: daunted by the inevitable—the gate of adulthood being opened; the stealthy but sure footsteps of infatuation; the stillness of deception under the cover of night; an uprooting of something dormant and precious, primed for devouring. Patsy closes that gate behind her and secures the bolt. “Is yuh mother still in Jamaica?” she asks Claudette.
“No. She’s here now. She lives wid my sistah in Jersey.”
“Does she stay wid you too?”
“No. I live by myself.” Claudette shrugs. She stares down at the table in front of her. “I guess my sistah is di lucky one. Married, wid children. Her husband is American.” Claudette laughs and Patsy laughs with her, for the sake of easing the sadness. “My mother treats my baby sistah like she’s di eldest. She get more respec’ as a married woman an’ a mother. Plus, she was di one who filed fah my mother. Me? I’m still dat likkle girl my mother pester about marriage an’ babies. Mind you, I’m forty.” Claudette laughs a little again—Patsy realizes that it’s a habit of hers, to deflect. Claudette’s eyes hold in them a distant look. But the mood evaporates with a quickness that makes Patsy blink. “I like di peace an’ quiet, anyway. And I’m hardly home.” Claudette shifts her weight on her chair. “Between di senior home an’ Likkle Jamaica, I’m always gone. You, on the other hand, seem like a homebody.”
“Ah thought ah struck you as a party animal.” Patsy laughs. “Isn’t dat what yuh said when we first met?”
“You will neva let me off di hook wid dat.” Claudette glances down at the table again and smiles, her dimples a chasm where Patsy’s lust stirs. “Yuh seem like an interesting person I’d like to get to know.”
“Di feeling is mutual,” Patsy replies. She immediately regrets that she has to be at work tomorrow. Regina had intended to leave home for a cabin deep in the woods, with no cell phone reception, to finish her book. But when Baby’s grandmother couldn’t come, the plans fell through. “Thanks fah agreeing to dis,” Patsy says to Claudette.
“No need to thank me.” Claudette is still looking down at the table as if she cannot think of anything else to say. “I’m free most Saturday nights. In case yuh evah want to do somet’ing . . . maybe even stop by my house. God knows ah love Sammuel’s food, an’ ah might have been raised vegetarian, but no one can cook oxtail bettah than me.”
39
THEY MEET AROUND THE CORNER AFTER SCHOOL, NOT FAR FROM the school gate. Tru skipped out on last period to change out of her uniform into comfortable clothes—her new Puma sneakers and Nike tracksuit—black with white stripes down the legs—before the sixth-form prefects noticed. Not that she’s afraid of these sixth-form prefects—girls like Kimesha Gregory and Althea Phaliso, who don’t care that Tru and them started first form together. Now they turn their noses up at her. Last time they caught her out of her uniform, they wrote her up for a demerit. The tracksuit was her father’s, but it shrank to her size when Marva put it in the dryer, which Roy bought from Courts last Christmas. Marva stopped asking him how he gets the money and who he has to pay back; she just accepts the gifts as they come.
“You look nice,” Saskia says to Tru with a shy smile.
“Thanks.” Tru stuffs her hands deep inside her pockets.
At first Tru and Saskia walk in silence, neither seeming to know what to say. Saskia squints in the late afternoon sunshine peering through the palm leaves. With one hand, she attempts to smooth over the straightened hairs that have lifted from her bun, looking like fine Anansi legs reaching out and upward into the blue sky. Tru stares at them, feeling a queer urge to reach over to help her. But she has never put her hands in another girl’s hair. She fingers the straps of her book bag instead, suddenly feeling restless.
“Did you see what Mrs. Rosedyl was wearing at assembly today?” Tru asks, though she rarely cares.
But it makes Saskia come alive, catching a guffaw with her hands. “It was hideous! She reminded me of Big Bird in all dat yellow.”
Tru laughs too, grateful to have broken the ice. They talk easily after that about teachers, grades, their upcoming CXC mock exams. They talk all the way to Half-Way Tree and realize that they catch the same bus. Saskia doesn’t live too far from Tru. She lives in Sackston, one town over, where Marva takes Tru to get her school uniforms made. When Saskia reaches her stop, she suggests that Tru come over and watch 106 & Park with her. She seems lonely, though she’s constantly flocked by her friends and teammates at school. She has a satellite dish that has over a hundred American channels, she says.
Once they reach Saskia’s neighborhood, a group of gangly teenage boys in khaki uniforms make catcalls at Saskia. “Psssst. Hey, Wilhampton girl! Stop, let we talk nuh.” She ignores them. They remind Tru of how she is with her friends. How they laugh and talk badly in the streets, because together they are carefree and fearless. She has never minded her friends’ roughness or their crass jokes, whistling just as loudly with them at beautiful girls, and laughing so hard that the soft parts of her quiver when the girls flip them the bird or full-out ignore them. But these boys are not Sore-Foot Marlon and Albino Ricky. These boys don’t take rejection well. These boys take their rejection out on Tru. “Is dat yuh man?” they jeer at Saskia. “Ah see is him satisfying you at nights wid him fake cock.”
Tru’s face warms.
“Some big dick yuh mus’ have, eh?” says one to Tru. “Yuh carry it around in yuh knapsack?”
“Dat’s hard to believe. How she g’wan tek a piss wid a fake cock or really feel what ah pussy feel like?”
“Is so dem do it in blue movie.”
Tru and Saskia move quickly past the boys, pretending to be deaf to the taunts. But the boys’ voices only get louder.
“Yuh know what ah can’t undah-stand wid sodomites . . ,” another boy answers. “How come dem not satisfied wid dem own. Pussy ah di same everyweh.”
“Maybe theirs different.”
“How different?”
“Big an’ ugly.”
“Naw. Dem probaby ’ave teeny-tiny hole since dem neva get stick.”
“Wilhampton look like she ’ave a tight pum-pum ready fah di sticking,” the loudest one hoots. He smacks his lips. “Come mek me save yuh, Wilhampton!”
Saskia turns to hurl an insult at them and Tru stops her. “Jus’ ignore them. Yuh only giving dem what dey want if you say something.” This is more patois than she has ever spoken to Saskia. They walk away, their backs braced against the boys’ howls.
When they reach Saskia’s home—a compact house painted bright yellow, with a shingle roof and a large, breezy veranda with white grilles around it—Saskia introduces Tru to her grandmother, who looks Tru up and down and says nothing. Saskia seems to ignore this and takes Tru to her bedroom. “We’ll have more privacy there.” It’s as though Saskia lives with no rules, the barrel her mother sends from England inside the room poised like a distant parent. Marva doesn’t let Tru and Kenny have friends over; and before Jermaine and Daval moved out, they weren’t allowed to have friends over either. She’s distrustful like that. “Friends will tek yuh business an’ carry it go road.” Even when she had hairdressing customers, they only sat in the back of the house, close to the kitchen. Saskia’s grandmother proceeds to clean nearby as the girls watch television in Saskia’s room. She hums and hums the same tune. Tru has caught the woman’s eyes several times peering at her from the top of her spectacles. Her eyes communicate some suspicion, condemning eyes sharpened by disgust. “Yuh sure I’m welcomed here?” Tru asks Saskia.
“Don’t mind her,” Saskia whispers, cutting her eyes at her grandmother’s back and closing the door. “She’s harmless. Also, sorry ’bout earlier. I’ve never seen those boys before.”
“What yuh apologizing for? I’m used to it,” Tru says.
“Dat’s why ah rate yuh. Yuh so brave.”
“Brave?”
Saskia shrugs. “Jus’ how yuh dress an’ carry yuhself. Yuh not afraid?”
“Ah can’t be scared to be me. Ah wouldn’t call dat brave.”
“What yuh call it, then?”
“Existing?”
“Yuh t’ink yuh can exist here?”
It’s Tru’s time to shrug. “Ah have been doing it so far. So . . .” Her voice trails.
Saskia stares at Tru, her arms folded across her chest like she’s examining her again. After a while she says, “Ah can’t wait to leave dis place. I’m going to live with my mother in Brixton next year aftah graduation.”
“Yuh talk to yuh mother a lot?” Tru asks.
“Every day,” Saskia replies.
Tru imagines Saskia and her mother exchanging stories about their day like girlfriends. Suddenly she’s lanced with envy. But the emotion dissolves when Saskia turns on the television. They watch music video after music video, switching back and forth from BET to MTV. Saskia turns up the volume when Beyoncé’s new song “Single Ladies” comes on. She gets up and begins to sing and twerk. Tru watches her with delight, taken by her dance moves. “Where yuh learn to dance like dat?” she asks.
“Ah watch a lot of music videos,” Saskia replies. “I’m an only child, so ah find things to occupy myself. Come, let me show you.” Saskia reaches out her hands for Tru to join her. Tru does a two-step inside the spacious bedroom, watching Saskia do a hand wave with her other hand on her narrow hip, turning like Beyoncé. She stops to twirl Tru like they’re on a ballroom floor. Tru stubs her toes on the chair at Saskia’s homework desk, and in an effort to break her fall brings Saskia down with her. They collapse onto the carpeted floor in a fit of giggles. The quiet that comes over them this time is a comfortable one, though Tru is aware of their sudden closeness. Saskia toys with a strand of her hair, which has come undone. This time, Tru boldy reaches over to put it behind Saskia’s ear. They exchange a glance. Tru acknowledges the thing that unlocked deep inside her the moment Saskia wrote her number in her palm. Like a bad nerve, it jumps—a belly-jump so great that Tru moves away a little and wheels her gaze elsewhere before she does something stupid. She catches a glimpse of a Hello Kitty sweater hung on the wardrobe. “Yuh wearing dat to sweater day tomorrow?” she asks, trying hard to sound casual.
Saskia shrugs. “My friends want to make sure di whole school see us together in our sweatshirts.”
“Do you like dat?”
“What?”
“Doing everyt’ing because dey tell you to.”
Saskia shrugs. “No. But they’re my only friends at school, so . . .”
Saskia looks down at the small space between them on the plush beige carpet. Tru does the same. “Maybe aftah school we can do dis more often,” Tru hears herself say.
Saskia raises her head. “Sure. I’d love dat.”
Her breath is a warm gust of air against Tru’s face. Just then, Saskia’s grandmother’s reproachful voice sails under the door. “Is six ’clock. You children finish wid whatevah oonuh doing inside dere? Is what oonuh doing in dere locked up like dat?”
Saskia rolls her eyes. “Seriously, Grandma?”
“It’s late. Tell yuh friend goodbye.”
As Saskia ushers Tru to the veranda, Tru gives the shrewd-eyed woman one of her radiant smiles. “You get home safely, young lady,” Saskia’s grandmother says, emphasizing young lady like a reminder.
40
PATSY SPENDS THE WHOLE WEEK THINKING OF CLAUDETTE. THE following Saturday, she rings Claudette’s doorbell to be buzzed into the building. Claudette lives in an apartment building on Ocean Avenue, a fourth-floor walk-up. Once inside the building, Patsy takes off her coat. She is dressed in a burgundy suede skirt, with leggings and a plunging black blouse to reveal some cleavage, both of which she bought at Goodwill for special occasions. “You look beautiful,” Claudette says when she opens the door, smelling like the spices Patsy grew up with.
“Thank you.” Patsy smiles, blushing. “T’ings smell good in ’ere.”
“Mek yuhself comfah-table,” Claudette says, running back to the stove. “I’ll consider dis a late Thanksgiving meal—Jamaican style—since ah cooked nothing on Thursday. What did you do fah Thanksgiving?”
Patsy shrugs as she looks around the studio. “Ordered Chinese food, watched di Macy’s parade on TV, an’ sleep.”
Claudette chuckles. “Sounds exactly like my Thanksgiving, except I ordered pizza.”
They both laugh. Their laughter is followed by an awkward pause before Claudette says, “Here, let me tek yuh jacket.”
Claudette’s studio is neat, partitioned by beads to separate the living/dining area from the sleeping area. Patsy purposefully avoids glancing in the direction of the low bed on a box spring flat on the floor, decorated with colorful pillows, which is shielded by the beads. She’s more intrigued by the fact that Claudette has a studio all to herself. “Di lease is in my cousin’s name. Ah pay him rent,” Claudette explains, as she hangs Patsy's coat. Below the smell of spices there’s a scent similar to the spirit oils Patsy’s psychic Belizean neighbor burns inside the building. Patsy attempts to sit on the beanbag propped in front of a small television next to the bookshelf, but when she almost topples over, she gets up and makes her way to the kitchen area, where Claudette is now busy preparing the food. “You need any help?” Patsy asks.
“Not at all. Jus’ sit an’ mek yuhself comfah-table,” she repeats.
Patsy looks around the studio some
more, occupying herself with the miniature bookshelf, stocked with mostly paperback novels with shirtless men embracing women on the cover. Patsy kneels and reads the spines. She doesn’t recognize any of the books. They’re certainly not the type Regina reads. Regina only selects books for inspirational value—volumes of anthologies. Oversized hardcover books with personal notes on the inside, signed by the author. A few times, while waiting in the pharmacy with Regina for prescription medicine or in line at the supermarket (since Regina hates shopping with Baby by herself, resenting his tantrums when she refuses to buy him something he wants), Patsy has seen her wiggle her nose at the kind of books on Claudette’s shelf.
One slim volume stands out among the romance novels: a book of poetry with Emily Dickinson written on the green spine.
“Emily Dickinson!” Patsy says aloud. “Yuh read har poetry?”
“Yuh know who she is?” Claudette asks.
“Saw her poetry on di subway years ago. Di one about hope.”
“A woman at di nursing home gave it to me before she died last year,” Claudette says, still stirring the pot and tasting the food. The book is badly dog-eared but in otherwise good condition. Patsy runs her finger along the hard spine. “Keep it,” Claudette says from the stove. When Patsy glances up at her to see if she’s joking, Claudette says, “It’s my gift to you.”
“Thank you.”
Patsy clutches the book to her chest and walks with it to the framed photographs on the walls. There are lots of baby pictures, mostly of a girl and a boy at various stages, whom Patsy assumes are Claudette’s niece and nephew. In the center of the wall is a photo of Claudette dressed in a leotard accentuating her ample curves, wrapped in a pink and purple boa, her bright red dreadlocks fanned around it. She’s laughing, perhaps at a joke told by someone who isn’t in the picture or at herself dressed in a ridiculous costume, her head tilted back, her dark brown face radiant, her teeth a perfect white arch as you can see the roof of her mouth and her squinted eyes. In a few photos, a younger and much thinner Claudette wears a bone-straight bob, grinning ear to ear on a beach. Claudette’s black one-piece bathing suit reads PALM STAR RESORT.
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