by Gemma Weekes
‘But your mom obviously loves you to pieces, Spanish. She came to see you! She keeps a scrapbook. Not to mention the fact that she bought you the apartment. That doesn’t look so fucked up from where I’m standing.’
‘It’s actually the whole house. The guy downstairs is my tenant.’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘It ain’t shit though. She’s married to this big-shot lawyer guy now and money isn’t an issue. Buying that old house in Bed-Stuy was like spending five dollars to him. Now they don’t have to feel guilty and they made a solid investment.’ He’s quiet for a moment. ‘Do you know how long it’s been since I spoke to my real father?’
I wait.
‘Seven years, ma.’
‘Damn.’
‘And even then, I had to track him down. He’s never remembered my birthday in his life. He never made it to my high school or college graduation. I only ever really got her to tell me the story one time, about how they met in high school and he kept asking her out until she said yes, then got her pregnant in their senior year. It’s really funny how she says that, he got her pregnant. Like she wasn’t even there at the time,’ he laughs. ‘Oldest story ever told. Her family rejected her because she was carrying a little black kid, and apparently my father’s family wouldn’t really accept her either. So it was tough for them. My dad started dealing drugs, got caught when I was two years old. He went to prison for three years.’
‘God.’
‘When he came out, he wanted nothing to do with us.’
I clear my throat. ‘Why?’
‘’Cause he’d started studying in jail, joined the Nation of Islam. He told my mother he realised she was a mistake, a product of his ignorance. Yeah, he’d send money now and again when I was growing up, but he stayed away.
‘He’s remarried now with a black woman and four children – my brothers and sisters – that I’ve never met. Fuckin’ ironic ain’t it? I bet I’m the most pro-black child the bastard ever had. I can’t remember my parents ever being together. It’s like they just made me and then came back to their senses.’
‘Spanish,’ I say. ‘Came back to their senses? Why would you say that? Sometimes shit just doesn’t work. It doesn’t mean you’re a mistake. How can you believe what you believe and say that? Even if they didn’t plan you, somebody did. Maybe you even planned yourself.’
When I finally reach over, the tips of my fingers barely graze his curls and he sighs deeply and once again I feel like he needs earth, an anchor . . . and I want to tell him that I have a problem even holding onto myself most of the time. We eat our food in a companionable silence for a while, watching people walk by.
And then his posture changes completely and I follow his gaze to a group of young men standing by the door to the cafe. ‘Pretty, isn’t she?’ he says to them with cartoonish suddenness. The vibe is instantly sour. His eyebrows are low, his jaw hard.
‘Spanish!’ All the breath leaves my body.
‘Excuse me?’ says a man with floppy blond hair. His friends all give each other confused looks and beer-slack grins. ‘Are you talking to me?’
‘You see something you like, white boy? I asked you a fucking question.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.’
‘Do,’ Spanish enunciates carefully, ‘you see. Something. You like? What? You thought I didn’t see you staring at my girlfriend?’
‘Spanish,’ I hiss. ‘Please . . .’
‘Dude, you need to relax,’ says another guy in a polo shirt and a cap.
Spanish stands up, shaking my hand off his arm. ‘I am relaxed. When I’m not relaxed you gon’ fucking know about it. I’m just letting you know I saw your ass.’
‘Come on,’ says someone else from the group. ‘Forget this shit, man. Let’s get out of here. There aren’t any free tables, anyway.’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ says Spanish, staring them all down like he can take them by himself. ‘Get the fuck out of here.’
I look down at my hands as they file past our table, too embarrassed to look up. I don’t until they’re several yards away. Faintly I hear them arguing. A hot-head in the group thinks Spanish should have got jumped on.
‘Spanish! What the hell was that? I can’t believe what just happened . . .’
‘They were fucking disrespectful, man! I hate what’s happening to Fort Greene nowadays! A bunch of white-bread yuppies just move on into the area and think they run shit! Start looking at black people all crazy . . .’
‘I didn’t see them look at me! And even if they did, so what? I’m with you, right? We’re eating dinner and you lose it because somebody looked at me? Why would you act like that? Maybe you really shouldn’t eat additives anymore.’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t wear that dress.’
‘You liked this dress earlier.’
‘Yeah, well that was different.’
I put down my knife and fork. ‘I’m heading back to my aunt’s house to get ready for J’Ouvert.’
Spanish shakes his head, sets his jaw ready to say something.
‘I’m heading back,’ I tell him. ‘You can either drive me back, or you can stay here with the yuppies. Your choice.’
splat.
I REMEMBER A conversation I had with Dominic one humid night he came over to my aunt’s house, looking for my mum. We’d grown quite close in the weeks since I’d been in New York. Dominic bought Zed and I lunch a few times, helped us cover for a night out at a club and, to top it off, got Zed some work experience at a recording studio. He was our favourite adult, and the only one who really knew how much I loved Zed. I’d never met anyone like him before.
On that particular night, Zed was out with some of his guy friends in Harlem and I was bored. I wandered away from the TV and outside to where he was sitting in the back yard, wrapping up what seemed like a fairly heated phone conversation with my mum. He hung up and stared at the phone like he wanted to smash it, then put it in his pocket.
The sun was beginning to fade orange and I looked over, struck by his profile. My mother being with a man like that made her different somehow. Even less motherly. He was like the Love Interest in movies, a leading man and not just The Dad character like my father was.
‘Love is strange,’ he said.
I didn’t want to interrupt straight away because it didn’t feel like he was even speaking to me. But eventually he swung his face around and smiled at me like he heard all my hormone-ridden thoughts about Zed and understood. He had an understanding face. I smiled back and didn’t say anything. I didn’t know anything about love apart from the fact I was in it.
‘It can drive you crazy if you don’t manage it the right way, you know, Eden?’ he said. ‘It’s like you wanna just,’ he squinted into the sky, ‘freeze this moment that makes you so happy, but you can’t. You can’t own it because the feeling is a person. And you can’t own a person, can you?’
It sounded like a real question. ‘No?’ I said.
‘No,’ he confirmed. ‘But how do you keep from either walking away or locking them in a room with you for ever? How do you live with so much uncertainty? It’s like your heart grows legs, climbs out of your body and goes walking about on its own. In traffic!’
He made a little walking gesture on his knee with two fingers and I laughed, because he was saying all of this with a very light tone. And being a particularly self-obsessed teenager, I was just thinking about me and Zed, and about how, yeah . . .
‘That’s exactly how it feels.’
‘It’s just not safe,’ he said. ‘One day, it’s bound to happen . . .’
‘What?’
‘SPLAT!’ he replied.
mollases.
IT’S A LAWLESS night.
Out in the streets we clot together like blood in a scab, all conflict suspended. The underworld has flooded Flatbush Avenue; an urban purgatory populated by calypso zombies and devils. On one side I hold Zed’s hand, in the other Spanish’s. One has a light, c
aressing touch, the other’s is tight and steady. Both Max and Spanish have one hand swinging free. There are no more arguments out here. Even if we did argue, we wouldn’t be able to hear ourselves over the drums and the steel pan, the shouts of the revellers. The music overwhelms our thoughts, the night infects us. We are surrounded by a parade of the undead, all coasted in layers of coloured mud and flour, as are we. All of us grey. All of us a little like The Woman in the clip frame. The men wear their clothes baggy and hide their faces behind rags, eyes shining in the streetlights. The women wear very little regardless of their build or age, squeezing into cut-off shorts and bra tops and tanks in army patterns or in the colours of their particular Caribbean flag. They shake and jiggle that flesh; stretch marks, love handles, cellulite and all. They apologise for nothing. They wind their bodies down to the floor in moves that simulate the kind of sex that could make a grown man cry and the kind of hips to make babies pop right out like champagne corks.
We hold tight to each other because if we let go, we don’t know if we’d be able to recognise each other anymore. There’s a feeling that if you got lost here, you’d be lost for ever.
We dance, we laugh. We drink, all of us, from the same bottle of mineral water. I begin marching in time too, letting my hips roll with the music, overwhelmed by all the noise and all the voices. I shout the words of the songs I know.
J’Ouvert. Daybreak. The youngest descendant of canboulay where ex-slaves celebrated the end of their bondage with satire, bacchanal, and masquerade. A dark tide rushing and pooling before the dawn, revelling in their freedom. But there is no sign of the sun yet. A half-naked man emerges amongst the wild crowds, slathered in tar, wearing very convincing horns and wielding a pitchfork. He dances uncontrollably while women dressed as red imps constrain him with chains. Jab mollasie. A mollases devil, so finely rendered he might be the real thing pretending to be a man pretending to be a thing. I giggle and scream and clutch at Spanish and Zed, feeling transported.
‘This is bloody amazing!’ I scream, but can barely hear my own voice. Some hard, fast soca comes over the sound system.
‘Come on! Shake that ass, girl!’ says Zed in my ear. He’s smiling wide, dancing like a true island boy in the hot crush of people. Splashed in green paint and flour, a grinning jab jab. ‘That’s the best you can do? You need some snake oil, baby girl!’ And then both of his hands are on my hips, and he is close behind me, breathing on my neck, gyrating, pushing up on me, smelling the way he smells. My hand slips out of Spanish’s hand and I whirl about. Anything goes. Anything is permissible here.
I watch Max do her stripper dance all over Spanish, backing up her skinny little bumper. He scoops some mud out of a passing bucket and dumps it in her hair.
‘You wanker!’ she shouts.
Zed’s hands slide up and down my waist, over my hips and my ribs. I try to sing along with the tune but no sound emerges. It’s the way it always is when he touches me. He’s hard through his trousers.
‘Can I keep you?’ he says right into my ear, and my heart clangs and turns over like a tired engine. My body is a mass of tingles. I’m singing between the thighs. I’m about to turn round to face him when the first cloud breaks. A few large drops of rain splashing down on our hot faces. It could be tears on his cheeks. A light veil of drizzle sprinkles the crowd. A few rivulets running down over tattooed biceps, between pushed-up bosoms, standing in our hair. Wet bodies push together.
And then, in a single, shuddering moment, the sky empties itself all over us.
Spanish grabs my hand hard and we swear and try to find a way out of the mêlée but everyone running means no one gets anywhere. Soon we’re all soaked to the bone and completely clean of flour, make-up, paint or sweat. The crowds knot and heave. Thunder starts and it’s louder than the music. Lightning flashes across the dawn-ripe sky and the panic escalates. Being struck by a stray bolt of lightning may not happen often but it’s possible and that’s enough for most.
‘Come on!’ says Zed, trying to push through to a kerb where people seem to be moving successfully. His slippery fingers tangling with mine.
‘This way!’ contradicts Spanish, moving in an opposite direction. The crowds swirl between us and carry me in a third direction.
‘Zed!’ I yell but my voice is swallowed in all the noise.
‘Where’s he gone?’ screams Max in my ear, and I realise that we’ve managed to hold onto each other. Soon we can’t even remember where we were, and both Spanish and Zed have vanished.
Eventually, after several loud minutes of rain thundering down and running people shouting at each other, we find ourselves shivering, beached on the kerb. It doesn’t feel like there was ever a party. A riot, maybe. The streets have regained their edge, the music has faded, rain is still falling.
Max and I begin looking for the guys amidst falling temperatures and ex-revellers who now just look like strangers. Scary ones.
A fight starts amongst some stragglers across the road, one group of men squaring up against another. Far away but not far enough away for comfort we hear a loud POP POP POP.
‘Fuck this,’ I say, grab her hand and start running.
‘Where are we going?’ Max shouts, breathing hard, hair and rain in her face.
‘Home.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘Madder . . .’ I say, struggling to breathe, ‘to stick around here!’
‘Eden! Hang about . . .’
‘Race you!’
We charge down the dim streets as fast as we can, dodging tired, soggy people. Doesn’t feel like much can happen to you when you’re running. And we are too fast for the cold. The sight of our mad dash is enough to elicit cheers from groups of men walking home or back to their cars, but they’re part of the reason why we’re running so we ignore them. We don’t stop until my chest burns and my feet are sore. I can’t go any further. Max whizzes past me, carried along about three steps by her momentum, and then comes back to stand next to me.
‘Oh my God!’ she pants, cheeks close to fluorescent pink. ‘You have mental issues! I almost . . . I almost died, mate!’
‘I think I did!’ I croak. ‘Is this hell?’
We look into each other’s ravaged faces and crack up laughing, hands on our knees, struggling to catch our breath.
‘Look,’ says Max when she can speak. ‘Should we go in there for a minute? Warm up before the rest of our walk home? I think I might have a stroke if I don’t sit down!’ We’re standing in the window glow of what looks to be a little Caribbean takeaway.
‘You got any milk?’ I ask her, channelling Juliet.
‘What?’
‘Milk and honey, girl, dinero . . .’
‘Oh right! Yeah, come on.’
Inside the joint is decorated in a tropical theme, with a wooden bar painted turquoise and walls hung with seascapes and faded calendars advertising Bounty Rum. It’s much warmer than outside; still feels like summer in here. A small, brown-skinned man with freckles and rust-coloured hair greets us when we come in.
‘Good morning, ladies,’ he says.
‘Hey . . .’ But then I don’t say anything more to him because: ‘Oh my God! Aunt K!’
how to act.
‘WHEN DID YOU get back?’ I say, loud with surprise. What are the odds of catching her like this at five thirty in the morning in a random West Indian takeaway eating a Jamaican pattie? I don’t know how to feel. ‘What are you doing here?’
Aunt K smiles and finishes chewing. ‘A-a!’ she laughs. ‘You think I’m too old for J’Ouvert?’ She doesn’t look too old for anything, except maybe foolishness. Her long multi-coloured dress is cinched in the waist with a copper belt. Copper sandals peep out from the hem. Her skin is smooth and shiny, glowing from the sun; her locs tumble free to the middle of her back, snaked with purple.
‘Of course not,’ I say, shivering, ‘I’m just surprised to see you. You didn’t say when you were coming back . . . So. Um. Anyway, Aunt K, this is Max.’
‘Nice to meet you, Maxine,’ smiles Aunt K. ‘You guys look like you’ve been through a couple of civil wars.’
‘It was fine,’ I say.
‘It was great until the storm ruined it!’ bubbles Maxine. ‘We lost Zed and Spanish. I don’t know what happened. It was supposed to be dry today.’
Aunt K snorts, ‘These weather people know nothing! They just want you to think they know, which is almost as powerful.’ She brushes the crumbs off her hands and takes a sip of her drink. ‘Don’t worry about the boys. They’ll be OK. You girls should have a ginger tea, then I’ll give you a ride home. Alright?’
We thank her and gratefully sit down. ‘Russell!’ she says to the man behind the counter. ‘Can we have two ginger teas with lemon, and two slices of carrot cake, please?’ Then she turns to us and says, ‘I’m having a party at the house tonight, so invite your little friends.’
‘Really?’ I say, even though I’m quite profoundly partied out.
‘Yes really. Ask everyone to come.’
I turn to look out of the window. Across the street, Zed is looking anxiously one way, Spanish the other.
‘We’re here, you pillocks!’ screeches Maxine, rushing outside the cafe. I watch until her performance is mute beyond the glass; she throws her hands in the air a few times and puts her hands on her hips. I wait. I haven’t figured how to act yet. I don’t know what face to put on. Moments later, she’s dragged them into the shop.
‘What the hell were you doing, leaving us like that!’ she’s saying to them as they come through the door. ‘We were scared.’
Spanish makes a doomed attempt to straighten up his muddy, wrinkled clothes and frizzed-out curls. ‘Doesn’t that woman of yours ever shut her big mouth?’ says Spanish, coming straight for me.
‘Yeah, shut the fuck up, woman,’ says Zed angrily. ‘I was looking everywhere for you.’ And when he says ‘you’ his eyes are on me. Can I keep you?