No Safeguards

by H. Nigel Thomas

  That week. On the Tuesday we sprayed the exposed parts of their bodies with musk oil to keep away the mosquitoes and black flies, got into the family’s powerboat, meandered among the numerous Sea-Doos blasting our eardrums and churning the water, traversed the lake, headed under a bridge, and continued upstream into the smaller Lac-aux-chiens, where the only sounds were birdcalls, mostly loons and crows, and the play of the breeze in the birches, pines, and poplars. Once we left the boat Jonathan got very agitated. We were sitting on a flat stone at the water’s edge. I had taken off my sneakers and my feet were dangling in the water. Jonathan kept looking at me, his cheeks a deep pink, a guilty look in his eyes, as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing, and I could hear his breathing. Then he got up and walked a few metres away from the water’s edge and into the forest; he returned and stood with his back turned to me before walking off again along the shoreline. Eventually I asked him if he was alright. He said yes. God, I’m daft!

  I liked being with his family. One New Year’s Day I was there and an LP by Les Bottines souriantes was on the turntable. I was fascinated; I’d never heard that sort of music before. In the evening, after supper and the washing up of the dishes, Raymond got out his accordion, Cecile two spoons, and Jeanne sang. Jonathan groaned and said to me: “Every year they do this. The neighbours must think we’re just a bunch of hicks.” But eventually he joined in, clapping. I clapped along with him. Jeanne, her voice faraway, wistful, sang what I later learned was “le Rossignol sauvage.” That year, when my birthday came around, Jonathan gave me a Bottines souriantes LP. I’ve since replaced it with the CD.

  Eventually I took them things Caribbean: Jamaican patties, coconut fudge, guava jelly (from packages Grama sent us); but what they most enjoyed was Anna’s black cake.

  Anna never met them. Cecile wanted to meet her, but Anna kept putting it off, and eventually the interest waned. Once too I had suggested bringing Paul to Lac-sept-Îles. Paul had complained that I never took him along. Jonathan did not answer.

  ***

  Paul raps and enters.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s alright.”

  He half-sits on the edge of the dressing table across from the bed. “Jonathan’s in love with you, Jay.”

  “You’ve said so many times before.”

  “Now I’m saying it for real. He used to blush whenever I caught him looking at you. That’s why I always teased you about him. Even Ma saw how besotted he was by you. ‘I can’t understand why Jay doesn’t take you along with him and Jonathan. I just don’t understand what those two have in common.’ That was a lot of criticism for her to make of her golden boy.”

  “And you believed there was something between us?”

  “I said it as a putdown. No more than that. I knew there couldn’t be anything between you two. You’d have felt you needed Ma’s approval first. Sorry. Just kidding.” He claps his thighs and guffaws and then his face gets serious. “You’re her firstborn. You took up all the space in Ma’s heart, Jay. None left for me. What can I say?” He shrugs his shoulders.

  “Paul, don’t say that. Your rejection of Ma drove her into a depression.”

  “Her guilt you mean. You loved her too much to see her faults. I was angry with her. I had to let her know. I’m not saying she wasn’t dutiful and all that, but I felt like a foster child.”

  “You never gave her much of a chance to be affectionate to you. I remember a caring mother, who left my father after he gave her one beating too many.” I tell him about Anna before she left our father.

  “Why you never told me this before.”

  “You never allowed me to.”

  “You didn’t try hard enough.”

  I sigh in frustration.

  “You and she bonded. Deep. Wow. After coming such a long way, like why did Ma like go back to those beliefs?” He becomes reflective, nods a couple of times. “I understand. I can see why she wouldn’t want to see the cruelty you suffered begin all over again with me. I could never say she was a cruel woman. In my mind I see her comforting you after Daddy flogged you. That sort of thing creates strong attachments and powerful painful memories. I remember all the guys who were cruel to me in school; my skin gets cold when I think about it. I don’t forgive easily. People hurt me, and I stay hurt and become their enemy.”

  “You have to get beyond that.”

  He comes to sit on the side of the bed, his back to the dressing table. He puts his hand on mine and keeps it there for a long time without saying anything.

  “Know something, Jay. I forgave Ma.”

  “Would have been nice if she’d died knowing it.” For what?

  “During those months you didn’t hear from me, I was thinking about a lot o’ things. You don’t understand what happened to me when I came here. You don’t. You saw my acting out, that’s all you saw. But Ma should have known better. There are many mothers here who should know better, but they don’t think or they refuse to think. Coming here was like taking me from a boat and throwing me into the sea and telling me to swim and keep clear of the sharks. Trouble is no one had taught me how to swim or how to defy sharks.”

  “No one can. Life’s a blind journey. Besides Grama wanted us to come.”

  “Yes, but if Grama had lived here and seen how this society’s run, she would’ve felt otherwise. She’d have known you don’t take someone from a secure environment and toss him into chaos without prior preparation. You came prepared. You’d already learned how to be responsible for yourself and me, from the time you were 11.”

  I see his point. I nod. “Well, Grama is dead so we can’t ask her. But you are right up to a point. Ma did realize that bringing you here when she did was a mistake.”

  “I’m glad she acknowledged it. When?”

  “On her deathbed . . . I’ll tell you about it some other time.”

  “Clarify something for me, Jay.” He stares hard at me.

  “Clarify what?”

  “Are you gay?”

  I reply as calmly as I can. “Do you mean if men arouse me erotically?”

  Paul snorts, closes his eyes, all the while shaking his head. “Yes. You’re so damn clinical!”

  “Have you seen Kinsey?”

  “No.”

  “Well, sexuality is a lot more complex than being gay or straight.”

  “Did you remain in touch with that beautiful Jamaican dougla girl who had trouble with her H’s, that girl you dated three or four years after we came here. For a while you two had a serious thing going.”

  “Tamara. No.”

  25

  FOR A LONG while neither of us speaks.

  “Back to Jonathan, Jay.”

  “What about Jonathan?”

  “He wants you all to himself. You don’t know that? That’s why I left and came home.”

  For a while I’m silent. “Life comes with constraints, Paul.” I stare into his eyes before adding: “Yours is your asthma.”

  “And looks. Adipose challenged too.” He chuckles.

  Ouch. “Ma’s was a fear of men after Daddy’s abuse. You remember how you used to tease her about joining the Baptists to find a husband?”

  “What about it?”

  “She’d sometimes say: ‘I have news for Paul. I had enough battles with Caleb to last two life times. Baptists believe that men should control women. These born-again men . . .’ She laughed. ‘The other day I heard this woman comic on the radio saying that women should have keys to their vaginas that they could leave at home. That way when rapists jumped them, they could say: “Sorry, buddy: I left the key at home. Not just leave it at home: put it in a safety deposit box.” Then her face got serious and she said: ‘When I got here I used to work for a deacon in the Pentecostal Church. He tried to rape me. Those scandals with those televangelists, they never surprised me.’” For a m
oment I reflect on the full story she told me on her deathbed. “Ma had her head on, Paul — she did — more than you ever gave her credit for. One of her church members, Brother Isaac, an undocumented immigrant, almost half her age, proposed marriage to her. ‘Sistah Hanna, will you join me in ‘oly matrimony, and become my queen?’ . . . ‘Some king.’ Paul I never heard Ma laugh so much.”

  Paul looks away, uninterested in the story.We’re silent for a while. Paul breaks it. “I’m older. Nineteen months older than when I left. Feels like two lifetimes.” It’s as if he’s speaking to himself. “I’ve had a lot of time to think, to reflect, to learn.” He gazes at me, makes sure he has my attention. “I wanted to be away from you especially, because even more than Grama, you’ve parented me. You’re the only unbroken link I’ve known. One day I’ll tell you what I went through.”

  “Paul, Stan struck Guatemala, and you didn’t even contact us to let know you were safe.”

  “I was afraid to write or call. I’ll tell you the full story. One day.”

  “What did you want to tell me the evening before you left?”

  His face tautens and he angles his head to the right and breathes out loud. One hand goes to his chin, the other to the back of his head. “That I was disgusted by the fool I’d made of myself . . . my life was in shards; I didn’t know if they could be put back together . . . that I wanted to commit suicide: the things that brought on my depression. You’d never imagine how envious I was of you.”

  I’m silent. I never believed that someone like Paul who’d thrived on academic excellence could so easily turn his back on it.

  “It’s why we had to share a joint. It would have been too painful otherwise. And maybe I might not have told you after all.” He looks away, grins guiltily. “And there was . . . never mind.”

  “Never mind what?”

  “You won’t understand.”

  Another long silence. Paul breaks it. “I need your opinion on something. You remember Brady and Jack, right?”

  I nod.

  “The day after the villagers burned down their house, Elka, one of those who still lived in the shanty on Laird’s Estate, told Grama: ‘It served them right.’

  “‘How what they did in the privacy o’ their own home concern you all?’ Grama said.

  “‘Is abomination, Ma Kirton. Pure abomination! They lucky we didn’t burn them up too, just like God burned them sodomites in Sodom and Gomorrah.’

  “‘It’s not their fault, Elka. God made them that way. We should leave it up to God. If they’re to burn then let God do it.’

  “‘No, Ma Kirton. No!’ She stamped the floor. ‘If God did make them so he wouldn’t o’ destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. You have it all wrong. Is ‘cause they choose to serve Satan. We is Christian soldiers, Ma Kirton. The Holy Ghost live in us and inspire us to take action against them.’ Then she frowned and stared hard at Grama. ‘I see where you is coming from. You is in their league, Ma Kirton. You is in their league.’

  “‘What you mean, Elka?’

  “‘You want me to be plain. Well, I will be plain. Rumour have it that you and Mercy is lesbians. And the way you is in agreement with abomination . . . hmm. Watch it; your house going be next.’”

  “Really! Paul, you heard that?”

  Paul nods.

  “Grama, what did she say?”

  “She reached under the counter and took up a box of matches and handed it to Elka; next she opened the till, took a five-dollar bill from it, and put it on the counter. ‘Here’s the matches and take this to pay for the kerosene.’ Elka left the shop then.” Paul pauses. “Jay, you’ve never heard people whispering about Grama?”

  “No. Remember, I was rarely in the store.”

  “You think there was anything to those rumours?”

  “No . . . Aunt Mercy and Grama were friends since Ma was a toddler, before Granddad’s death, before Grama remarried. She and Grama were like sisters. You saw how they lived. Some parasite of a man that Grama spurned after she left Bradley probably started it. Grama was too independent for them.”

  “Could have been Sefus Butcher.”

  “Sefus who?”

  “Butcher. You wouldn’t know him. He used to hang around the store saying he was courting Grama. Bantering mostly. A comic. Grama felt that if he’d lived abroad, he would have made a good living as a comedian or storyteller. Mostly Grama hid from him. Sometimes she’d send me out front to reconnoitre; when he was there, she’d give me her instructions to take to Lucy, or send me to call Lucy if there were no customers. But she couldn’t always to do that. Sefus proposed marriage, a common-law relationship, even setting up a rumshop upstairs.”

  “‘Who will bankroll you, Sefus?’ Grama asked him. He lived in a mud hut right up under the rocks. That same year or the year after the November rains washed it half way down the hill.

  “‘Youself, Ma Kirton, and with the profit I make I will pay you back before you can say: “Sefus, honey boy, I love you with all my heart.” But by that time, me and you going be husband and wife, blend together like cake, sweet-sweet, sweeter than cake, and what’s mines going be yours and what’s yours going be mine.’

  “He told her one day: ‘Ma Kirton, the only thing missing from your life is my sweet loving. I keeping the piston well oiled for when you ready to get the engine rolling.’

  “‘Lay down the tracks first, Sefus. Lucy, what I will do with this piece o’ twine?’ She pointed to Sefus. ‘Tie up myself with it?’ He was tall, almost two metres, but couldn’t have weighed more than 65 kilos.

  “‘Ma Kirton, you is not listening — if you try me — all o’ me — you will be a contented queen.’

  “‘Sure, Sefus: on the toilet seat with grugru branches on my head.’

  “Three customers had come into the store. They laughed.

  “‘Sefus, I’m seeing you and hearing you, and understanding you.’ She cleared her throat, looked at Lucy, and winked.

  “‘But, Ma Kirton, you never taste me. Don’t let looks fool you.’

  “‘Sefus, carry your sniffing someplace else. Nobody in here is in heat.’

  “‘That’s ‘cause you and Mercy does zamay.’

  “That day — it was during school holidays — Aunt Mercy was in the storeroom at the back listening to him. She came to the front. And you know, Jay, with that stare she has when she angles her head, screws up her forehead, tears her eyes wide, and fixes you, she said: ‘Go long, Sefus, you already get enough love in Laird stables where your pappy raise you.’

  “Jay, everybody laughed. Everybody.

  “‘Make me catch you alone one o’ these nights when you going home, I will show you what I learn in Laird stables.’”

  Paul takes a deep breath. “I loved listening to Sefus. One day a woman came into the shop with her arm in a sling, and when she left Sefus said: ‘Is sweat rice that cause that.’

  “‘How you know? She tell you?’ Lucy asked him.

  “Sefus laughed. ‘He catch she doing it. Since then he going round saying, he can’t leave her, that she tie him.’

  “‘Sefus, that don’t mean she can’t leave him.’

  “‘Lucy, if she did want to leave him you think she would o’ sweat the rice in the first place?’

  “Grama never told me what ‘sweat-rice’ meant. She said she didn’t know. You know what it is, Jay?”

  “No.”

  “It’s when a woman lets her menstrual blood drip into her man’s food. Zora Neale Hurston writes about it. Some women believe it will make a man stay forever.”

  “And men who want to keep women for life, what do they do?”

  “I don’t know. He was a boat repairman and used to work mornings and take the afternoons off. ‘How come you always here, Sefus? How come you’re not at the rum shop?’ Grama said to him one time.

  “‘Ma Kirton,
I saving my liver for when you and me get married. The doctor tell me to stay off grog. I come here and admire your golden eyes, watch your sweet smile, drool over your honey lips, and don’t get me started ‘bout your bouncing behind.’

  “I think Grama enjoyed his flirting and his thinking. One day he and Elka got into an argument about God and the Devil.

  “‘Elka, the Devil didn’t have no mother. God is his mother and father. Everything in him come from God, so God and the Devil is one. And that means that Jesus and the Devil is brothers. Is another one o’ those stories where God set one brother up against the other.’

  “‘Sefus!’ Elka shouted. ‘Stop it! You is blaspheming! Stop it!’

  “‘Ma Kirton, you see why I want you to married me? You and me know them stories in the bible is pure make-up thing. Elka, if God didn’t want me to think he shouldn’t o’ put brains in my head.’ Jay, you missed a lot not being in the store. I’ll be using a lot of that stuff in my fiction.”

  Silence.

  I break it. “Give Bill a call. He’s been worried about you.”

  “I will, tomorrow. I sent him a card from each of the countries I visited. It was he who told me I should come clean with you.”

  “About what?”

  Paul looks at the floor, swallows loud, then breathes loud and turns his head away for a while. He takes another deep breath. “When I told him about wanting to leave home, he asked why and said that going away should be about more than just running away from family; that most people who leave home discover it’s themselves they’re trying to run away from . . . ” He sighs, stops talking, purses his lips and shakes his head. Something about this is stressing him. “I told Bill how impressed I was by Thoreau’s Walden sojourn. He said to forget about Thoreau, that Thoreau was preparing himself for that since birth. ‘If you must go away, go somewhere with a different culture, where no one knows you. It will help you to see with new eyes.’ He’d gone to Chile, excited by Allende’s election victory in the early seventies, and had to be evacuated by the Canadian High Commission when trouble broke after Allende’s overthrow.