“I jus’ want to be,” Patsy replies.
The wind picks up and blows flurries across their faces. Claudette lifts her fur-lined hoodie into place. She’s staring at Patsy with anxious confusion, her eyes wide like she’s trying to read something in the dark. “Did I do some’ting?”
“No.”
“You haven’t said a word to me since we walked outta di restaurant.”
“I didn’t like di setting,” Patsy lies. Claudette’s eyes narrow. Patsy’s voice drops. “If it was somewhere else, dat song would be fine . . .”
Claudette laughs. “Dat’s it? Dat’s what’s been bothering you? You really t’ink dat song was about you?”
“It wasn’t?” Patsy asks.
Claudette laughs—her laughter rises and grips Patsy’s shoulders with its chill. Patsy’s face warms despite the cold. Giving her a sharp look, Patsy says, “It’s time to call it a night.”
When Claudette sobers, she says, “Ah used to pride myself on being able to figure women out. But you—ah neva met anyone like you before. Yuh hot one minute, then yuh cold. Is like Jekyll an’ Hyde.”
“Yuh don’t know me like dat.”
“Ah know enough.”
“Enough?”
Claudette takes her hand and squeezes it. It warms her. “Ah know enough, Patsy,” she repeats, this time more forceful, as if there were no more questions about it and Patsy only has to accept it with the finality with which she accepts the forward edge of winter. Claudette continues, “If yuh let me, ah can be there for you.” There’s an intensity in her eyes. Patsy looks away, strangely afraid of it. “Ah bettah be going,” Patsy says.
“Dat would be too simple. Too easy fah you. Yuh not tired of running?” Claudette asks.
Patsy turns away from Claudette, who is standing against the wind. But Claudette steps closer and pulls Patsy toward her. Claudette’s body is warm against hers, inciting a painful surge of what Patsy understands as a long-suppressed yearning breaking through her skin.
“Come, let’s go somewhere warm,” Claudette says. “We ’ave all night.”
PATSY DOESN’T PROTEST WHEN CLAUDETTE OPENS THE DOOR TO her studio. She flicks on a switch and light floods the small room with its warm smell of years of candles and incense. Patsy lingers by the doorway as though unsure if, once she enters this time, she’ll be able to leave again. Claudette takes off her jacket, hangs it on a hook by the door, and tells Patsy to sit. “Ah will mek us some tea. Do you want some rum in it?” Claudette asks.
“No, thank you,” Patsy says.
Patsy eases into the room and out of her jacket. When the water boils and Claudette pours it onto the Tetley tea bags in her handmade ceramic mugs, Patsy takes a sip, imbued by steam. They sit in comfortable silence, drinking their tea. “You know,” Claudette says very gently as if she doesn’t want to break their moment. “Ah always knew you were interesting since ah first saw you.” Her long fingers curve around her mug, a wry smile on her lips. “You’re so secretive. Why’s dat?”
“Why not be?”
“I’ve been open with you.”
Patsy takes a deep breath. “There’s so much about me dat might turn you off.”
“Try me.”
“Ah haven’t reached out to my dawta since ah left home ten years ago,” Patsy says.
Claudette is quiet. Patsy wonders what she’s thinking.
Patsy continues, breaking Claudette’s gaze, “My mother always told me ah child is a gift from God. But I neva could bring me self to ask har what if I neva wanted it. What about what I want? No one evah asked me what ah want, besides you.” She looks up at Claudette, who appears to be looking not at her, but inside her. “Is like I was taking a present from God given to me when I was too green to say not right now. Or no t’anks.”
Claudette shifts in her chair. Maybe she’s judging Patsy, after all. And how could Patsy blame her? What kind of a woman leaves a child like that and dares to tell anyone about it? Patsy lowers her eyelids and gazes down at her fingers around her cup. Claudette gets up, opens a vanity drawer, and returns with a small framed photograph.
Patsy stares at the black-and-white pictures of a little girl, about five years old, with clumped dreadlocks sticking out of her head. She’s in the arms of a tall, chiseled Rasta man with dreadlocks down to his waist. He’s staring straight into the camera, unsmiling. The hands holding the little girl are blackened and callused. “Is dis yuh father?” Patsy asks.
“Yes,” Claudette responds.
“Why yuh giving me dis?”
“We lost touch a likkle.” Claudette shrugs. “He neva liked me cutting off my locs in di first place. But more than dat was how he used to treat us. Like we were aftah-thoughts. Dat man had so many women dat we didn’t mattah. An’ I forgave him. Took me years. But I forgave him.”
“It’s different fah fathers,” Patsy says. “We expec’ dem to be dat way. No one judge dem as harshly because ah dat. I’m a mother. Mothers, we don’t . . .” Her voice trails. “Mothers don’t get dat sorta pardon.”
Claudette bites her bottom lip, mum.
Patsy shifts her weight in her chair. “Ah bettah get going. Ah have work in di mawnin’.”
She thanks Claudette for the tea and gets up, hoping to grab her jacket before Claudette touches her again, warming her blood. When she reaches the door, Claudette is still sitting at the table where Patsy left her. “Patsy, you won’t be able to earn yuh dawta’s forgiveness by jus’ trying to do what people expec’ you to do. Do what yuh t’ink is right, from a place of honesty. She’ll respect yuh honesty.”
“Have a good night,” Patsy says.
“You too,” Claudette replies. “Same time, same place next week?”
Patsy nods and forces a smile. She closes the door. In the hallway, she stands still for a moment, frighteningly alone. She takes a few steps toward the elevator. The lights flicker above her head and the high silence screams in her ears.
She turns around and knocks on Claudette’s door. As soon as Claudette opens it, Patsy kisses her. Claudette’s mouth opens, kisses back. Clumsily, Patsy puts her arms around Claudette and pulls Claudette to her. She almost apologizes, almost backs away again—back to the desolation. Claudette, who must have felt Patsy’s moment of hesitation, murmurs in her ear, “It’s all right. Ah was hoping you’d come back. Ah didn’t mean to compare your situation to my father. Forgive me . . .”
She takes Patsy by the hand and leads her to her low bed, parting the beads around it. When Claudette presses her mouth to Patsy’s neck, Patsy shudders. She allows the other woman to undress her, to peel away the layers, including the flimsy girdle, which frees the excess flesh. The rolls of fat don’t feel as unattractive under Claudette’s gaze. Neither does the branch under Patsy’s belly. With her forefinger, Claudette traces it as one does an open palm to read. She looks up at Patsy, her eyes lifting to hers with an impassioned question, but she says nothing. Patsy’s skin dissolves under the gaze, becoming soft and beautiful like the colorful waist beads shimmering against the deep brown of Claudette’s flesh. “Ah want one like dis,” Patsy whispers, toying with the beads around Claudette’s waist. “I can make one fah you,” Claudette says, her lips brushing Patsy’s cheek. She presses them to Patsy’s and lowers Patsy to the bed as she rises above Patsy like the sea. She straddles Patsy and Patsy kisses her breasts. Caught in her embrace, Patsy smells the sweet musk of Claudette’s skin. Patsy raises her face to behold Claudette in her naked beauty—openly voluptuous and thoughtfully shaped with a lovely tension to the brown skin and muscle underneath, a body so powerful and ethereal that Patsy cannot wait to experience the feel of it. Claudette kisses Patsy once again; and Patsy, as trusting as a child and as ardent as a woman, receives Claudette’s tongue like she did the wafer during her first Communion.
As Claudette’s body fuses with Patsy’s—the long fingers that had clasped her ceramic mug curling inside Patsy and turning her to butter—the world drops away, and so does time. This,
Patsy believes, is worship—to enter a woman the way one enters a sacred temple, and to be entered. Patsy frees herself of Mama G’s warnings about sin—”A chile of God mus’ preserve har temple an’ not give in to di dark intrusion of di Devil.” And the images Patsy has long held on to—Cicely sitting on her lap, her beautiful face emerging from the curtains of her dark, silky hair; Uncle Curtis’s honey-covered secret pressed to Patsy’s lips and the airy sensation of rum filling her head; Roy’s permissive murmur, “Birdie, ah t’ink I’m in love”—fade away.
43
WHEN TRU ARRIVES FOR PRACTICE, SHE’S SURPRISED TO SEE none other than Pope himself, sitting on a stool underneath an ackee tree in the yard, wearing flip-flops and a pair of army-green pants with no shirt, showing off a very muscular torso and arms, the color and texture of rustic wood. His eyes are hidden behind dark shades and one hand is on his chin, while the other holds a ganja spliff between his fingers as he watches Tru’s teammates play. Surrounded by his posse, he says nothing during the game, even as Sore-Foot Marlon scores multiple goals. The usual afternoon game has turned into a spectacle. There are men everywhere—men sitting, men standing, men talking, men laughing, men drinking. What used to be Tru and her friends’ time to bond and shed their angst has now been amped with adrenaline and testosterone. No longer schoolboy soccer. Tru senses competition between her friends and the new boys, each one vying for Pope’s approval. Her teammates dribble the ball with dexterity, to the surprise of the new boys and the men with purple handkerchiefs tied around their necks, arms folded across their chests, and legs apart like cowboys. “Bombaaaat! Da team yah baaaad!” they shout, and high-five each other. Tru smiles to herself, reveling in the moment, because surely Pope will want them on his team when he realizes how well they can play. But Tru’s smile only lasts for a moment. One of the new boys—a tall, dark fellow from Fagan Lane with crooked teeth—pushes Sore-Foot Marlon hard to the ground.
“Who yuh t’ink yuh is, hogging di ball like dat, batttybwoy?”
Sore-Foot Marlon falls flat on his back, wincing from the sharp pain, as the other boy runs off with the ball. Not one to be pushed around, he runs after the boy and punches him in the face. The boy fights back, swinging at Sore-Foot Marlon, but misses. Three of the boy’s friends dash from under the mango tree where they had been perched on rusted iron chairs from the classrooms. They surround Sore-Foot Marlon. The biggest boy among them locks Sore-Foot Marlon from behind, his elbow around his neck. Then, from out of nowhere, Albino Ricky pulls out a gun and holds it to the boy’s temple. Sore-Foot Marlon’s eyes widen. “Ricky, what yuh doing?”
“Listen to me, pussy-hole,” Albino Ricky says calmly to the big boy who has his arm around Sore-Foot Marlon’s neck. “Touch me fren’ an’ me done yuh!”
Sore-Foot Marlon’s fists are clenched, his chest rising and falling quickly like someone blowing and sucking air inside a brown paper bag, his face stricken. The other boys back away from him, shocked by the gun.
That’s when Tru hears the booming voice.
“Enough!”
They all turn in its direction.
“Listen to me.” Pope—a man no taller than any of them, including Tru—takes off his dark shades so the boys can see his eyes. “On dis team, everybody equal. Yuh hear? Fight like dis ’pon me team again, an’ yuh see who g’wan get buried. Our mantra g’wan be all fah one, an’ one fah all.”
Tru refrains from rolling her eyes. Pope is completely hairless, save for the goatee on his chin. He stands with his hands clasped behind him in the manner of a priest. When he speaks, the inside of his mouth looks like a refrigerator with what appears to be silver braces holding his pearl-white teeth like crates of eggs. Tru wonders why a man his age needs braces. Looking at the boy who pushed Sore-Foot Marlon, Pope says, “If yuh evah pull dat stunt again, yuh off di team.”
The boy nods sheepishly, wiping the sweat dripping down his clay-brown face with his T-shirt. “An’ you!” He turns to Albino Ricky. “Put away dat gun an’ nuh mek me see it on di field again. Yuh hear?”
“Yes, sah,” Albino Ricky says, tucking away his gun in his waist.
“Oonuh shake hands, now!” Pope demands.
The boy and Sore-Foot Marlon limply shake hands without looking at each other.
“Good,” Pope says when they’re done, his face serious. “On dis team, oonuh g’wan train as men, not boys. Ah don’t want to only mek yuh into ballers, but warriors.” To the rest of the team, he says, “Watch an’ learn. Wid dis team, nobody can seh nuttin’ good don’t come from Pennyfield ever again. We g’wan show Jamaica. Ah want everyone here at four o’clock sharp. No excuse. Dis is trial period. Come late, an’ yuh might as well leave. Oonuh not only playing to win twenty-five thousand U.S. dollahs. It must be earned. Undah-stood?”
They all nod in agreement. Tru senses that her friends are already tasting the decadent meals, feeling the nice clothes on their backs, and smelling the promise of twenty-five thousand dollars—an odor, she imagines like the stripped bark of a cedar tree, spicy and sweet.
Pope flashes them another caged smile. “Good.”
After the boys disperse, Tru approaches Pope, who is in conversation with a few of his posse—all men.
“Pope, sorry I was late,” she says.
From the corner of her eye, she sees Sore-Foot Marlon and Albino Ricky pausing to listen.
“Where were you?” Pope asks.
“Extra lessons ran late. I’m retaking the CXCs in June.”
“Hm. Ah t’ink yuh was g’wan say yuh jus’ come from foreign. How come yuh soun’ suh proper? Yuh guh to one ah dem good schools in Kingston, don’t?”
“Ah guess.”
“Good money-people schools, ah can tell.”
Tru pauses, not sure where he’s going with this.
“What’s yuh name?”
“Tru.”
His gaze narrows at first as he tries to match the voice to the look. Like all the other men in the streets who have done this before him, there is a look of confusion before it transforms to something unreadable—a cross between amusement and just plain bewilderment. “You’re Tru?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ricky neva mention dat you’re a girl.”
“I’m not.”
He chuckles a bit to himself and turns to the three men behind him. “Crowbar, look who Ricky recommend as di best forward ’pon di team. Yuh evah see anyt’ing guh suh? A girl?” Tru’s face warms as the men laugh. They lower their cigarettes.
Crowbar’s reptilian gaze crawls all over her. “Yuh sure is a girl.”
“I’m a ball player,” Tru replies. “Dat’s all dat matters.”
Tru feels exposed. It’s as if she has just walked onto a stage, all eyes on her. The men’s postures change too. “Hol’ on. Hol’ on,” Crowbar says. He stands firmly, with his arms folded across his chest. His narrow face is as dark as midnight and his eyes are gashes of yellow. Tru doesn’t like him at all. “Is only one t’ing women good fah,” he says. “An’ balling is not it. ’Less is to jiggle it.”
The other men laugh uproariously. She doesn’t respond, feeling her teammates’ eyes on her, the heat warming the back of her neck all the way to her face. She looks away from Pope, whose eyes are moving in a slow caress over her face as if he’s observing her reaction. She suddenly wants to be invisible, annoyed at herself for saying anything in the first place. Her eyes, which swiftly cross over his, must have confessed this, because he smiles to himself. “What would yuh mother say about you playing wid boys, Tru?”
“She’s not here to say anyt’ing.”
“I know Patsy wouldn’t like you being around me a’tall, a’tall.”
“You know my mother?”
“Know?” He chuckles. “We almost grow up like bredda an’ sistah. Yuh mother used to come to my mother’s table when Mama G couldn’t feed her—”
“What?”
“Dat was a long time ago. Ah guess she moved on to greener pastures, fr
om what ah hear. She was a pretty girl like yuhself. It’s a shame to see yuh waste all dis pretty. Maybe yuh should find a likkle girls team to play wid.”
“Look like she already play ’pon dat team, anyway,” Crowbar adds with a wink. “But we can work somet’ing out fi set har good an’ straight.” He grabs his crotch.
“Crowbar, not another word!” Pope barks. “Say somet’ing like dat again, an’ yuh bloodclaaat dead. Yuh know who har father is? Sergeant Beckford. I see yuh want an early grave!”
Crowbar’s jaundiced eyes narrow. “No, boss.” He gives a slight nod to Tru and skulks away with his crew, still watchful, like a group of wildcats whose eyes glow in the shadows. Pope gestures for Tru to follow him so that they can talk in private.
Sore-Foot Marlon, Asafa, and Albino Ricky look on helplessly, since there is not much they can do or say to Pope. He leans forward, his hands on his hips. “You seem very smart, Tru. So let me ask you somet’ing—what would yuh police father seh about you playing on my team?”
Tru tries not to show her surprise or disappointment. Her mouth opens and closes.
“I—I never asked.”
Pope laughs softly. “Here’s some advice fah you, Tru. How about yuh sit dis one out? Ah promise it’d be di best decision yuh evah make. Right, Ricky?”
Albino Ricky looks from Pope to Tru, then back to Pope again. He gives a nervous chuckle, and Tru catches his momentary hesitation, her own distrust flaring up when Albino Ricky nods. She blinks back tears, not wanting these boys, these men, to see her cry. They’d think she’s really a girl for sure. Sore-Foot Marlon puts his hand on her shoulder as they walk away, but Tru shrugs it off and stalks ahead. She can still feel Pope’s gaze on her, turning and turning.
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