They Never Told Me

by Austin Clarke

  She looks to me like one of those women who comes alive on the pages of a library book in which she had read about indenture and reaping cotton and planting short pieces of sweet potato and sugarcane cut expertly by her and by hundreds of others whose names she does not remember now… women, were they called Sugars? Dots? Sweetness? Girly? Negro? Lil Nig? All of whom, her own mother and the mothers of all the young girls like her, were born and raised in the plantation tenements. Yes! It is the same women. Right there in the book. “It’s in the book!” somebody said. “It’s in the book!” Indenture-women. Indentured as slaves. “They bring we here, from where we was. The same thing they put we through. Right there in that book. The Crossing. That was the name of that book. But I start-out telling you bout the lickings and the whips, cut fresh from the tamarind tree and still green… whap!… whap!… whap! Whap!”

  She looks at the envelope lying on the table, where it has been since yesterday. She was sitting right here, just as she is now, when she heard the ring of the bicycle bell. The rain started to come down. It was warm. Like the sea when it touches the skin, first thing in the morning. It is the afternoon of Tuesday. The rain falls in thin drops, like water poured through a sieve, made with small holes. My mother remains at the Dutch-window. The rain drops become warmer; and heavier. And they cause her to put her hands to her throat, as if she is about to strangle herself, holding them there. And then she uses them to close her bosom and her neck from the strange draught which strikes her neck and her breast.

  Ring-ring!… ring-ring… ring! Ring! Announcing rings. She knows this ringing. She has heard it before; many afternoons. It is familiar. The afternoon and the rain falling, and the tricky colour of the skies above her head, above the trees, above the telephone wires that had just brought her the time…“Four-thirty. Grennitch Mean Time,” is so confusing this morning. “But it is not morning! Is afternoon!… morning gone long-time.” Still, she is not sure of herself; sure, even, of recognizing the sound of the bicycle bell.

  The grandfather clock is ticking. The rain is heavy on the trees. Mango, avocado pear, tamarind, and paw-paw are now all drenching the neighbours passing, and who walk under them. They are getting wet, two times: once from the trees; once more from the rain itself. The rain has painted the trees in the same colour. Into a rich, painful green. And the bicycle bell is insistent as if it were announcing some tragedy, or more rain to come later in the evening. The bicycle bell searches for the person for whom the ring-ring! Ring-ring is intended. The bicycle bell ignores the ominousness that its silver, nerve-stinging intends. The grandfather clock, just behind her… tick… tock… tick tock… is ticking sad in a hollow made of silence, as if it were announcing an unwelcome visitor, perhaps a friend or former friends or enemies, and especially that one person, “that blasted man. But why welcome him?…”

  She flings the shutters of the Dutch-window back. The The afternoon is exposed to her now.

  Ring-ring! Ring-ring! Ring-ring!

  “My God! Griffoot, the postman,” she says. “Griffoot come already? My God. It is five o’clock, already? Griffoot delivering letters already.” As if by arrangement, the grandfather clock strikes five times. It is a mournful greeting of time and postman. And the rain is coming down, harder. With the jalousies of the Dutch-window thrown open; she exposes herself and her thoughts, to the elements. And to Griffoot.

  “Five o’clock! The whole day gone, so early?” she says. The rain is driving out of the skies, piercing through the avocado pear trees and the paw-paw trees, and the mango trees, onto her exposed face. She sees the Raleigh three-speed bicycle. It is painted green. Yes, it is Griffoot. The postman. He is walking towards her, holding his bicycle with his right hand, getting drenched, stepping gingerly into broadening pools of water, picking out the few drier sections of the path and stretches of sheltered grass leading to the front door to walk on. He has not seen her yet. The rain is even heavier now. He rings his bicycle bell again. Rrring-ring! Rrring-ring! Rrring-ring-rrrrubg-rrrrring! The two jalousies of the Dutch-window begin to bang in the wind with the rain. Griffoot can see her now. She has seen Griffoot.

  “Griffoot? Why you out in the rain making such a racket, with that damn bicycle bell, on my premises for?”

  Mr. Griffoot has to walk gingerly through the deepening pools of rainwater that have gathered on the grass and in the gutters at the side of the house. He is dressed in khaki trousers, khaki shirt, khaki jacket with silver buttons that run up to his neck; and three smaller ones at the sleeves. And a matching khaki cap, with a peak; similar to the caps worn by private liveried chauffeurs who wear uniforms. Griffoot wears two black plastic clips round his ankles, to protect his brown shoes. His shoes are sopping wet. He puts the clips on round his ankles, in a heavy rain like this, to prevent his trousers from catching in the chain. The chain is greased thick with “car-grease.” Griffoot holds a letter in a brown envelope under his khaki jacket to protect its contents from the rain and from the eyes of any malicious neighbour, in case. He knows neighbours indulge in malice. After shaking off the water on his jacket, his shoulders and his sleeves, he hands her the brown official-size envelope.

  She holds her face up to the rain, like a child, to let the cool water wash her face.She does not sing as children do in the rain.

  Griffoot waits at her window.

  “Girl, how are you?” he says.

  “I here, boy,” she says.

  “Letter for you. It look important.”

  “Who writing me this important-looking letter? Eh, Griffoot, boy? You know who it from? Eh, Griffoot, boy? You know who writing me?”

  “Guvvament, it look like. OHMS, girl.”

  “On Her Majesty Service?”

  “How you know that?”

  “On the envelope.”

  “Her Majesty?”

  “Or His Majesty’s.”

  “Guvvament it look like. OHMS, girl!”

  “What this is now, nuh?”

  “Read it, and you’ll see. I going down the Hill… Incidentally, you have anything hard? A lil Mount Gay…? Even, if necessary, a glass o’ ice-water?”

  “But Griffoot! How you mean… if I have a glass o’ water?”

  “Read the letter good, girl. I going down the Hill…”

  “Lean-up the bicycle ’gainst the house… whilst I look for a drink for you. If I can’t get you a drink, at least, I can afford a glass o’ ice-water…”

  “One thing I can’t understand… why poor coloured people like we, love to write summuch damn letters! Only giving me a lot o’ blasted work. ’Specially when the rain falling so hard. And wetting-up my blasted clothes… and wasting all this paper… and giving me all this hard work. Incidentally, how Tawm?”

  “He back there like always… in the back-room… in the shed-roof, behind that door… reading his Latin, and other Ancient things, like the Histories of Ancient places, if you please! Or, so he tell me. So he tell me…”

  She chooses a crystal shot-glass. She pours it to the brim.

  “Emm! Emm-emm!” Griffoot says, the drink hitting his palate as he clears his throat, anticipating the satisfying strength of the Mount Gay dark rum from Daddy’s decanter. It is Mr. Griffoot’s usual reaction when he drinks dark rum. She serves it with a matching saucer, on a white napkin that has white flowers and squares knitted into it, like her tablecloth. She made the napkin herself. She hands Griffoot a second drink, “his gay drink,” as she calls it, whenever he passes; whenever he rings his bicycle bell three times, announcing his arrival, whenever my mother is sitting at the window, looking like she is about to sing out. Griffoot and Stepfather sing in the choir, bass and tenor of the Sin-Matthias Anglican Church by-the-Sea, down the hill, through Britton’s Hill, down, down, down to the small church, on the beach, looking out to the sea.

  Griffoot wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. It is his left hand. He straightens his jacket; he shakes the rainwater from his cap; he brushes off the excess water from his jacket; from his
trousers, from his cap, all with his left hand. He holds his right arm stiff like a man who has been wounded. He then slaps his clothes, as if he were beating a child. He does not have any children.

  He takes his hat off. And beats it against the khaki postman’s bag that contains letters and parcels. His trousers and his shirt and his jacket are all made from the same material, including the cap, of strong brown khaki. He is tidy once again. And he smiles with her, when he swallows the last sip of the rum, and promises to stop, when he passes tomorrow, if she is at the window, if he has another important-looking letter, stamped OHMS on the back of the envelope, and with her address on the other side.

  And Griffoot walks back to the road. He stops. Turns around. Rings the bicycle bell, rrring-ring!… rrring-ring!… like a final greeting; and jumps on the saddle, making himself comfortable on the leather seat. When he turns the corner, he is still waving. He free-wheels down the Hill, into the village.

  She punches the index finger of her right hand into the brown official envelope. The one she has been toying with. It is the same way she punches her hands into the guts of a flying fish or a chicken to pull the guts clean out the body. She pulls out the white type-written paper. It is folded two times over. And she flattens the type-written letter out on her right leg, just above her knee. The letter is one sentence long. “The purpose of this letter is to inform you that…”

  That was yesterday. And now she sits, sad, holding that same envelope in her hand. She puts it down. It is raining again. The rain is falling light. It seems to make her more sad. She is alone. And lonely. Her loneliness creeps into her body, just like the chill of the morning dew. But on this late Wednesday afternoon, just as the dusk falls, the light rain has stopped, and the dew has turned to humidity. And then this heaviness, this loneliness, this sadness, which has a taste like strong dark rum, has come upon her.

  She takes the crystal glass from the table. She lifts it to her mouth. The glass catches the weak light of the afternoon. The sun is dying. Sliding into the peaceable waves. She can see the waves from her window.

  Such afternoons she sits in this same chair watching this same sun, the size of it, the weakness of it. From the silence of the dying sun, she has seen many things. She places her hand over her breasts, to make herself tidy.

  There is no one for her to talk to now. Things around her are changing into shapes that she cannot define. Mango trees, paw-paw trees, golden-apple trees, avocado pear trees, and ordinary trees surround her, and with the fleeing of shapes there is the new silence of sadness that surrounds her like the lingering smell of the Mount Gay Rum. She moves her hands searching for something, searching not with her hands; nor with her eyes; and in fact she does close her eyes, and her hands; first her left hand moves over the tablecloth, and then her right hand follows that hand, and then she stops. Abruptly. She finds what her hands are searching for. The envelope.

  It has turned surprisingly cold. Almost chilly. But the afternoon though dying is still not close enough to spread its deathlike coldness over a piece of paper, over a piece of brown paper, with OHMS printed just above her name: Mrs. G. Jordan…

  “All night I thinking of this letter, come too late for me, now that he dying. But not for the boy. And now I told that boy what I promise the Lord I would never say… that blasted man’s name. Why now? Why now? But now it’s out of my hand. It’s up to the boy now.

  “Tawm! Tawm! Tawm!”

  Her eyes are closed. She is moving her head from side to side. She lets out a deep moaning sound. She moves her head like this, when she has a toothache, which makes her cry “rivers o’ tears,” as she calls it: shaking her head from side to side, shaking her body with her eyes squeezed shut.

  “Tawm-Tawm! I know you standing there listening to every word I breathe!”

  She is stomping her foot, her right foot, on the sand spread on the floor, to help keep it clean. The grains of sand make a grating noise.

  “Come, boy!”

  She pulls the letter from the envelope, furious now, and waves it at me. I can see across the top: Sin-Michael Almshouse for the Indigent.

  “Seventeen years too late!… and in all this time the blasted man coulda been dead. Shoulda. For all I care…”

  SO?

  And then I draw circles on her nipples, with my index finger; and then I touch sweet velvet, silky and fresh as an oyster… and the blood starts pumping through… and I am counting the notes in the violin that Mendelssohn is playing… and I drop off into a dream… of sea water and sun and the wind fleeing over the Atlantic Ocean; coming to me, on the island: waves coming in, slow and sure. And she is nearly there, approaching on the waves of her own arrival; and then…

  “Oh!”

  … and then, she whispers for me to take it easy. “Please,” she says, “easy.” Her voice is a whispering. “Easy…” This is the second time now, making it seem that at this moment, she is not sure. Fear is in her voice. And her voice comes in soft shudders… one after the other; as if she is not sure that she can carry the explosion that is in her body, like “rushes” that increase and build inside her body her body…

  “No!”

  … and I rest. And I think of how else I can make her happy. While I wonder, she is shivering: pulling her body away… determined to regain her freedom… and in the midst of this, her question, “How would I make love to you, if I was making love to you?” Her question is like a dream: but I am not dreaming now.

  I am in the chilly sitting room. And she is dressed in white; a ghost, in her long cotton nightgown, transparent enough to make my eyes see, easily, what I should not see. It fits her long like her wedding dress.

  Her legs are outlined, marked out in their sturdiness in this mid-February winter light; and her breasts are heaving; and getting heavier; and Mendelssohn is a whisper now. I hear her whisper…

  “Yes!”

  I am not imagining that I am hearing the whisper.

  “Yes.”

  It is a cold, chilled appeal and confession…

  “Yes.”

  I was… I was… one time…

  Mendelssohn is…

  “Please… be patient… easy, please…”

  Mendelssohn is soft like the pads that control the vibrato in a muted trumpet.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” she screams.

  So? So? And the trumpet spits the question out. So? So? The trumpet is muted. The question becomes philosophical. And its place is taken by the turbulence of the drum, beating, beating, coming from being just the provider of the beat and the rhythm, and now, it is in the forefront of this blues music that I am hearing; into the ferocity of laying down the beat. The tenor saxophone has taken over from Miles: and Miles has surrendered and is keeping time, beating it out by the tapping of his shoes. All this time, I have turned my back to the audience. If I ever had an audience. I have no audience. There is no audience to witness this. The tenor saxophone is in a rage. Coltrane’s notes…

  I am at this time, standing beside the Juliet window, in the sitting room, swallowed up by the lamenting muted trumpet made more sad and sullen by the tenor saxophone which takes it on the same journey, but in thicker woods and into trees growing in marshes with long branches, strong and thick as rope to fit the neck, in a lynching.

  The trumpet is replaced by the tenor saxophone that Coltrane is playing, beating a different time, faster than the trumpet that had already whispered the slow sadness in the music, and had hinted at the indifference buried in the one-syllable word, So! and had hinted at the theme: “pahm-pam… pahm-pam… pahm pam… pashm-pam… pahmm-pam… pahm-pammm” – and I can hear the sound of the keys that touch the felt and the metal of the saxophone, which is swifter, and which gives a new measurement of time and space to the music. It makes my heart beat faster; and my blood pump thicker than the lackadaisical pace of the blues for the trumpet’s own seductive repetition of desire; and with the triplication of this desire, with its minor keys. It paints a picture, for me, defining
want and hunger. It brings to my mind, a canvas: the icon of a man in a shack in the Deep South, singing “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.”

  The cold wind is coming through the white sheer curtains at the Juliet window. It hugs me round my shoulders. And soon, I am dozing off. I am alone in the large house, in the sitting room; soaked in the perfume of pink Japanese flowers, whose leaves are soft; soft as her nipples; and as beautiful.

  I put my head against the bathroom door, and imagine that the sound I am hearing is the hissing of mist born of the hotness of the water. The sound of mist. Mist rising from beneath the closed door. I can hear the water from the shower as it forces through the pores in the shower head. I know that it is tilted to give the body… in preference, the body of a woman… powerful, satisfying steaming waterfalls. I listen. My head is against the door. I keep it there for a long time, the steam flowers up from the bottom of the door. I hear the woman’s voice. Or I think I hear it, like a cry for help; coming, coming through the mist, and it rises, just like the top registers of the muted trumpet, the instrument at Miles Davis’s lips.

  The woman’s moaning voice slips under the bathroom door.

  “Yes, yeah-esss… Yes!”

  The woman’s voice is in a higher register now.

  “Yes!”

  I cannot see her. I do not know the cause of her cry. The bathroom door is shut.