They Never Told Me

by Austin Clarke

  “What, then?”

  “I want to ask if you know anything about mental breakdowns?”

  “Who’s having one?”

  “Are there signs you can see, if you know those signs and how to look for those signs?”

  “You have to be trained to know. There are books. Lots of books in the store. Lots of things could be signs.”

  “Is falling asleep one?”

  “You and I would be in that state, darling.”

  “I mean, every evening, recuperating as he is, with a bottle in his hand? And sleeping in his clothes? As Mr. Iacabucci does do.”

  “It could be. And then again, it doesn’t have to be, if you see what I mean. It does not have to be. People like that, they should be helped.”

  “Can I tell you something?” Her room was hot, her skin hot, her upper arms and legs. It must have been the heavy woolen coat.

  “About my racial attitudes?”

  “This evening, just before I left. He was sitting in his library, his den. And I went in. To see if there was anything I could do before I leave. If anything was wrong, before I leave. Not that I was thinking anything was wrong. I went in to see something, for myself. And there he was, sleeping, like a little child.”

  She rubbed the inside of her knee.

  “He looked to me so much like a little boy. And there I was, standing up over him… Such strangeness came into my head.”

  “You think of comforting him?”

  “I was shame shame shame at the things that came into my head.”

  “Like comforting him?”

  “Gerts, what the hell do you mean, by comforting him? A woman my age? He is not a child that I should comfort him! Pat him? Run my hand through his head of hair? What the hell you suggesting, Gerts?”

  She was laughing into the phone so Gerts could hear her laughing, quiet-like, a suggestive laugh more suggestive than she had intended as she passed her hand up and down her leg. “God! these legs got an itch like all get out in the winter! No, I am not now speaking to you, Gerts!” She was beginning to feel warmer.

  “Are you there?” Gerts asked.

  She raised her dress above her knees, following the tingling that travelled like a contagion. She looked down into the lusciousness of her legs.

  “Still strong for my age.”

  “Are you speaking to me?” Gerts asked.

  She rested the telephone on her shoulder near her neck and leaned her head on it, so that it became fixed in that crook. Both her hands were now free. She could hear Gerts’ breathing through the receiver. She turned her dress hem backwards, folding it into a roll, until it reached almost up to her waist. She could see her tight black mound of hair. She placed her right hand there. And closed her eyes immediately. She did not want to see. She did not want her eyes to witness this sin. And it was as if the secrecy and the privacy of the act being committed in her basement apartment, alone as she was, was so sinful in her belief, and for her Christian life, so enormous and so startling, that she could not bear to witness it, could not bear to see her own act, herself. But the sensation was there. Like a sting. Through the receiver, there was a faint sound, as if her friend Gerts had put her own receiver down to perhaps eat another chocolate cookie. There was only a faintly perceived breathing. Perhaps, it was her own breathing she was hearing coming back to her.

  “Can I ask? Ask you something? Private?”

  The breathing, the silence, the caressing had become one: outside the single window of the basement apartment, heavy wet flakes of white were falling. She was aware of their falling. She remembered airing pillowcases in the backyard, near the white-limbed trees behind the mansion in the ravine, and seeing feathers fall to be carried away in the wind. And she remembered hearing the howling of the wind through the branches of the white-limbed trees. Birches? Those with white limbs! With bird bark. And next door, now, someone turned on a stereo, and the booming of heavy music, steel and voice, tore through the thin wall, her back resting on this wall, leaning against the wall, to be more comfortable; to be relaxed; to be free; to be more accommodating to the demand of her body.

  As the music poured through the wall slow, full and thick, the wind piled snow against the glass; and her hand was moving against herself and the sight of the fall of snow silently banking against the window was the only soft relief she had from the pounding of the music next door.

  “May I ask you a personal question, Gerts? When you undress at nights, whenever, do you find yourself… How do you undress for bed?”

  Gerts said something which she didn’t hear.

  “Gerts, talk.”

  “Strip and flop. Strip and flop, particularly after ten hours in the store with books.”

  “Being alone, Gerts. Being alone, all the time, there’s things I do, things I do, like taking off all my clothes with the lights out, even though there’s not a living soul here, but me, and these beasts next door playing all this tuk-music which I sure you can hear, deafening me all hours o’ the night. Sometimes, I swear that if I don’t cover myself in the darkness, one o’ them might be at a hole in the wall, spying on me and seeing all my business. Just like their music drives me up the wall. Gerts? Do you know I never undress with the lights on? And I’m in this place all by my lonesome. There’re certain things, girl, that I won’t dare do, even when I am alone.”

  She heard a dog scratching at the outer door of the basement apartment.

  “That dog again!”

  “What?”

  “That blasted dog and those sinners next door!”

  “You got to kill that dog,” Gerts cried. “I tell you that before, so many blasted times.”

  “Oh God, no, Gerts! My God! I can’t do that. Poison a dog? No, man, that isn’t Christian. I couldn’t do that. How would it look to see my name in the papers, and on television, arrested and charged and in front of a judge… oh God, no, Gerts!… and some o’ them judges as racist as the police!… and out in prison with a lot of blasted women, wickers all o’ them, and you can never tell what dirtiness women do in prison, what would happen in those circumstances? If I was to put some ground-up glass bottle on a bone and feed it to that blasted dog, I don’t wonder what would happen. Perhaps, where you reside, a person can do that. But up here at Finch and Steeles, where there’s all this crime and people unemploy, and undecentness, and rapes every other day, they would swear there’s a connection between the colour of my skin and such action. Not me, darling. That blasted dog again!”

  She moved away from the thin wall through which the music was vibrating against her body. “Anyhow, you ever undress, and stand up naked in front of your bureau, or look in your bedroom looking glass, in that state? You do?” She burst into a laugh, aware it sounded a little forced. “And do you inspect your bubbies, your breasts, in case of cancer? You do that every night? And don’t get a certain sensation when you doing that? No? But do you inspect other parts, though? Even with the lights out? Not me, girl, I still feel a little ashamed to be looking at myself in that way.

  “Gerts, I never thought there would be two women in this world, two women who are so different in certain ways, with different jobs and education and schooling living in two different places and we could be going through night after night, the same womanly tribulations o’ life! Image that, eh? And you give yourself an inspection in the bathtub, too? I have a teddy bear. And child, I enjoy, I just enjoys playing with that thing as if it was a child, and I was the age of my own child. Blasted dog!

  “But let me ask you this now, Gertrude. Do you think that these feminine things that we do, and have to do, being women living alone, are things we really should not be doing, because they are the actions of a child? And I never broach this to you in all this time, but in all this time whilst talking to you, I find myself touching myself, a thing that was farthest from my mind and intention. And I have seen loneliness that you could cut a knife with. And if you don’t mind me telling you this, Gerts, cause the truth is the truth. And hones
ty is honesty. But I really enjoy doing it. I really and truly enjoy myself. Even though it is sinfulness. According to the Bible. It started out so innocent. You know when you come in from outside in the cold, into a house that warm, and the cold outside this week is so damn terrible, that you feeling as if your very bones is turning to ice? The sudden change in the temperature? And in your body? It started out as an innocent thing, like a sensation…”

  The dog was still scratching against the metal frame of the storm door.

  “…can’t understand, and I never will understand certain people. I am talking bout these brute-beasts living next door to me. The music. The loud music. The loud music all hours o’ the night. And now the dog. The dog all hours o’ the night. And if I tell you, Gerts, that they are social workers. Blasted social workers. You won’t believe that people who make such a critical fuss over people on welfare, can you explain to me how they could allow another living creature, namely their dog, to be out in the cold on a night like this? Is minus-twenty? I mean, even me and you. Grown women. In our two homes. And we still have to seek…”

  She made a face, a tense face, pursed her lips, and began shaking her head.

  “…sisterhood? Is that the new word? I hope it doesn’t mean nothing else! Like wicking! Well, sisterhood, then. Although I never heard such a word. I must look it up in the books that Mr. Iacabucci in the ravine has in his library shelves. But as I was telling you, those two damn brutes who call themselves social workers don’t really know the first thing bout God. Or the meaning of niceness. Or humanness. To leave a living creature out in a night like this? What you say the temperature now?”

  “Freezing.”

  “Below?”

  “Minus.”

  “Minus hommuch, my dear?”

  “Twenty to twenty-two.”

  “Lord have His mercy! Not even a dog, no, not out there in snow so deep. Let me call you back, Gerts.”

  She went to the front door. The dog yelped, squeezing through the crack of open door that also brought in a gust of wind and cold, a cold that drilled an icicle of pain into her shins. The dog danced in frantic circles on the linoleum.

  She closed the door, slotted the three bolts, and locked out the cold and the night.

  “Let me feed this dog some milk,” she said.

  The dog sprawled on the linoleum, whopping of its tail on the floor.

  She opened her small, white fridge: there were wedges of cheese in yellow plastic wrapping; bottles of soda water “for gas”; tomatoes and apples wrapped in cellophane; milk in cartons, one carton of homogenized, one of two per cent; pieces of ginger bought months ago and looking now like deformed fingers; tins of marmalade and jams from Jamaica; plastic containers of rice, peas, rice-and-peas, roast beef, roast lamb, roast pork; and bottles of tomato paste, bottles of grapefruit juice, five containers of yogurt, for losing weight. “I gotta get rid of this food. Tummuch food for one person!” and, top shelf, front and centre, her bottle of Hennessy Brandy.

  A two-burner stove stood beside the fridge; two saucepans of split peas and rice, and a stew of braising beef, pig tail, carrots, onions and mushrooms. When she lifted the lid, the dog drooled. But she gave it milk. In a white Pyrex bowl.

  “Not my stew, you brute-beast!” she told the dog, who was lapping up milk noisily. “I muss walk through tummuch cold to bring this food, from down in the ravine, to this place, for me to waste it on you. You a blasted stray dog!”

  She ran her hands over the wet fur of the dog, and then poured Hennessy into the crystal brandy snifter. She was thinking about the Commandment concerning strong drink, knowing that the Hennessy was more than “for medicinal purposes, Lord”; and all the time she sipped, she knew the dog’s eyes were on her, she could feel eyes spying on her from behind the wall; next door eyes, eyes she was sure watched her undressing every night, the eyes of the blasted ghost of Satan upon her. She poured a double shot of Hennessy, Satan’s ghost the strong justification of her indulgence.

  She began to undress for bed. She examined her legs and thighs, and her breasts; and she stood in front of the looking glass on the bureau, and tried to see her whole back, from the neck to her lower spine. The dog was bent into a hairpin, biting into its wet fur. She wished she had double joints, was supple and young like this dog, so she could see herself, from every angle.

  Her breasts had “slumped” not fallen. The nipples were long and black; there was no hair around her nipples. Her abdomen was not flat. But it was not bloated, either. “Tummuch rich food I taking from that place down the ravine!” Her backside was broad. And it was her backside, whenever she had a man, that was love-tapped and massaged. “Good for fooping and bearing children,” her husband used to say. When he’d said it, she had always said, “Don’t listen to you!” Her legs were strong, and well-shaped. All the hours she spent walking to night classes, walking from kitchen to bedroom, from hallway to bedroom, from bus stop near the ravine to the community college where she had started and had dropped courses in Practical Nursing and Gourmet Cooking, but had been haphazard in her homework. “I just spending time, girl, just spending time! I muss look after myself.” She looked at herself, long and critical, but then, with a pang of self-consciousness for the dog was staring at her. She pulled a long silk nightgown over her head, adjusting her left breast, holding it with tenderness and fitting it inside the bodice of the shimmering material. The dog was on its hind legs. A small, pink-coloured point of wet flesh had come out from under the dog’s belly fur. It then grabbed her leg with its front paws. “Are you fooping me, dog?” She swallowed the Hennessy in one gulp, the dog still on her leg. “My God! Is this the kind o’ dog you is? The kind o’ dog they train you to be?” She tried to throw the dog aside with the fling of her leg; her slipper slid across the linoleum. She said, “Git! Git!” and stomped her foot and the dog fell back. “That’s a good doggie.” She flung herself on the soft queen-sized bed. Its accommodating springs took her weight, springs that had once been molested by the weight of two bodies, one heavier than hers, long long ago, the body of the man she was married to. She spread her legs, passed her hand across her nightgown to make space for the spread of her legs, and the dog sprang into that space.

  “You son of a bitch!” she screamed.

  She jumped down from the bed, holding the dog by the collar. She opened the door and the storm door and hurled the dog into the snow on the steps. She closed and bolted the door.

  Shivering, she dialed Gerts.

  “Goodnight,” she whispered, more like a kiss than a whisper, as she poured herself another Hennessy against the night chill.

  “What’s your time? Let me set this alarm for tomorrow morning. What’s your time?”

  “Nine-thirty.”

  “Only that?”

  “Miles and miles to walk…”

  “What you saying, Gerts?”

  “A poem.”

  “Who by?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  “I am cold cold, goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, my dear,” Gerts said, but neither hung up.

  She pulled three blankets up to her chin, and then over her head. “You still there, Gerts?” She thought she must look like a body, a corpse, that was the way she’d seen a corpse once in a television movie. She was whispering into the telephone, “So many hours and hours, the night still so damn young, Gerts!”

  OLD PIRATES, YES, THEY ROB I

  Won’t you help to sing

  These songs of freedom?…

  I am in a small flat, in a guest room, as the landlady calls it; my stay being extended on the last day of the conference on Commonwealth Literature where I had been invited to speak; a conference of much whimpering and tongue wagging. I am alert in the early morning, sitting in bed close by a half-open window hearing a voice thin as a razor blade join Bob Marley’s plaintive voice, two voices that come up from the outdoor car repair garage that sits to the east of this house of small flats, a car clinic atop underground par
king places; one of the voices being an old recording of Bob Marley singing “Redemption Song.” I feel sad to hear Bob Marley’s voice and the thin voice of the mechanic working in the garage. I feel Marley’s song, as I sit wrapped in bedclothes, is a personal chastisement,

  Won’t you help to sing

  These songs of freedom?…

  I hear the banging of wooden mallets on the metal rims of car tires; and the sound of car tires being rolled around under the sun of the outdoor garage, striking the galvanized paling; the voices of the Jamaikians below the window, their hands slick with thick car grease and oil from rummaging in the bowels of the engines; and the slamming of car doors, and the mechanic singing along with Bob Marley’s strident, screeling voice

  … old pirates, yes, they rob I,

  sold I to the merchant ships…

  And then the mechanic talking to two men in police uniform, the two of them getting out of their black car. The light on the top of the car is moving around in a slow red circle of menace; and one of the two police inquires, “What you know about who’s up there?” I hear danger in the policeman’s question as one of the mechanics looks up above ground to the window in my direction, a man I had said hello to and given the nod to. Looking back down to the ground, he replies to the police, “Me nah-know, man!”

  This mechanic’s one of those who had been brought here as a child to live in this neighbourhood of Brixton, and on the night I had arrived, with his hands and face smeared with the thick oil drains from crank cases, he had extended his hand in brotherliness. Brotherly love, my arse! I had said in my Barbadian heart of snobbery. Not in this world. Ma-fucker! – hearing “Bredder! Brethren!”; making me think not of here and the hostilities of this place, but of the silver sea, and of coconut palm trees, giving me a stillness of mind for a moment, but then again the calypso man Bob Marley’s voice was in my ear… sadder now, painful in its rebuke, rising in its indignation at my measured silences, my day-to-day refusal to help in any way that might mean physical risk. I could hear the mechanics down below in the outdoor shop now singing in tandem,