Falling in Love With Hominids
Page 15
My father was a Shakespearean-trained actor. Me, I performed a paradigm shift on The Tempest.
Down,
Down,
Down,
To the deep and shady,
Pretty mermaidy,
Take me down.
—African-American folk song
“Did you sleep well?” she asks, and you make sure that your face is fixed into a dreamy smile as you open your eyes into the morning after. It had been an awkward third date; a clumsy fumbling in her bed, both of you apologizing and then fleeing gratefully into sleep.
“I dreamt that you kissed me,” you say. That line’s worked before. She’s lovely as she was the first time you met her, particularly seen through eyes with colour vision. “You said you wanted me to be your frog.” Say it, say it, you think.
She laughs. “Isn’t that kind of backwards?”
“Well, it’d be a way to start over, right?”
Her eyes narrow at that. You ignore it. “You could kiss me,” you tell her, as playfully as you can manage, “and make me your prince again.”
She looks thoughtful at that. You reach for her, pull her close. She comes willingly, a fall of little blonde plaits brushing your face like fingers. Her hair’s too straight to hold the plaits; they’re already feathered all along their lengths. “Will you be my slimy little frog?” she whispers, a gleam of amusement in her eyes, and your heart double-times, but she kisses you on the forehead instead of the mouth. You could scream with frustration.
“I’ve got morning breath,” she says apologetically. She means that you do.
“I’ll go and brush my teeth,” you tell her. You try not to sound grumpy. You linger in the bathroom, staring at the whimsical shells she keeps in the little woven basket on the counter, flouting their salty pink cores. You wait for anger and pique to subside.
“You hungry?” she calls from the kitchen. “I thought I’d make some oatmeal porridge.”
So much for kissing games. She’s decided it’s time for breakfast instead. “Yes,” you say. “Porridge is fine.”
Ban . . . Ban . . . ca-ca-Caliban . . .
You know who the real tempest is, don’t you? The real storm? Is our mother Sycorax; his and mine. If you ever see her hair flying around her head when she dash at you in anger; like a whirlwind, like a lightning, like a deadly whirlpool. Wheeling and turning round her scalp like if it ever catch you, it going to drag you in, pull you down, swallow you in pieces. If you ever hear how she gnash her teeth in her head like tiger shark; if you ever hear the crack of her voice or feel the crack of her hand on your backside like a bolt out of thunder, then you would know is where the real storm there.
She tell me say I must call her Scylla, or Charybdis.
Say it don’t make no matter which, for she could never remember one different from the other, but she know one of them is her real name. She say never mind the name most people know her by; is a name some Englishman give her by scraping a feather quill on paper.
White people magic.
Her people magic, for all that she will box you if you ever remind her of that, and flash her blue, blue y’eye-them at you. Lightning braps from out of blue sky. But me and Brother, when she not there, is that Englishman name we call her by.
When she hold you on her breast, you must take care never to relax, never to close your y’eye, for you might wake up with your nose hole-them filling up with the salt sea. Salt sea rushing into your lungs to drown you with her mother love.
Imagine what is like to be the son of that mother.
Now imagine what is like to be the sister of that son, to be sister to that there brother.
There was a time they called porridge ”gruel.” A time when you lived in castle moats and fetched beautiful golden balls for beautiful golden girls. When the fetching was a game, and you knew yourself to be lord of the land and the veins of water that ran through it, and you could graciously allow petty kings to build their palaces on the land, in which to raise up their avid young daughters.
Ban . . . ban . . . ca-ca-Caliban . . .
When I was small, I hear that blasted name so plenty that I thought it was me own.
In her bathroom, you find a new toothbrush, still in its plastic package. She was thinking of you, then, of you staying overnight. You smile, mollified. You crack the plastic open, brush your teeth, looking around at the friendly messiness of her bathroom. Cotton, silk and polyester panties hanging on the shower curtain rod to dry, their crotches permanently honey-stained. Three different types of deodorant on the counter, two of them lidless, dried out. A small bottle of perfume oil, open, so that it weeps its sweetness into the air. A fine dusting of baby powder covers everything, its innocent odour making you sneeze. Someone lives here. Your own apartment—the one you found when you came on land—is as crisp and dull as a hotel room, a stop along the way. Everything is tidy there, except for the waste paper basket in your bedroom, which is crammed with empty pill bottles: marine algae capsules; iodine pills. You remind yourself that you need to buy more, to keep the cravings at bay.
Caliban have a sickness. Is a sickness any of you could get. In him it manifest as a weakness; a weakness for cream. He fancy himself a prince of Africa, a mannish Cleopatra, bathing in mother’s milk. Him believe say it would make him pretty. Him never had mirrors to look in, and with the mother we had, the surface of the sea never calm enough that him could see him face in it. Him would never believe me say that him pretty already. Him fancy if cream would only touch him, if him could only submerge himself entirely in it, it would redeem him.
Me woulda try it too, you know, but me have that feature you find amongst so many brown-skin people; cream make me belly gripe.
Truth to tell, Brother have the same problem, but him would gladly suffer the stomach pangs and the belly-running for the chance to drink in cream, to bathe in cream, to have it dripping off him and running into him mouth. Such a different taste from the bitter salt sea milk of Sycorax.
That beautiful woman making breakfast in her kitchen dives better than you do. You’ve seen her knifing so sharply through waves that you wondered they didn’t bleed in her wake.
You fill the sink, wave your hands through the water. It’s bliss, the way it resists you. You wonder if you have time for a bath. It’s a pity that this isn’t one of those apartment buildings with a pool. You miss swimming.
You wash your face. You pull the plug, watch the water spiral down the drain. It looks wild, like a mother’s mad hair. Then you remember that you have to be cautious around water now, even the tame, caged water of swimming pools and bathrooms. Quickly, you sink the plug back into the mouth of the drain. You must remember; anywhere there’s water, especially rioting water, it can tattle tales to your mother.
Your face feels cool and squeaky now. Your mouth is wild cherry-flavoured from the toothpaste. You’re kissable. You can hear humming from the kitchen, and the scraping of a spoon against a pot. There’s a smell of cinnamon and nutmeg. Island smells. You square your shoulders, put on a smile, walk to the kitchen. Your feet are floppy, reluctant. You wish you could pay attention to what they’re telling you. When they plash around like this, when they slip and slide and don’t want to carry you upright, it’s always been a bad sign. The kisses of golden girls are chancy things. Once, after the touch of other pale lips, you looked into the eyes of a golden girl, one Miranda, and saw yourself reflected back in her moist, breathless stare. In her eyes you were tall, handsome, your shoulders powerful and your jaw square. You carried yourself with the arrogance of a prince. You held a spear in one hand. The spotted, tawny pelt of an animal that had never existed was knotted around your waist. You wore something’s teeth on a string around your neck and you spoke in grunts, imperious. In her eyes, your bright copper skin was dark and loamy as cocoa. She had sighed and leapt upon you, kissing and biting, begging to be taken. You had let her have what she wanted. When her father stumbled upon the two of you writhing on the ground, she had
leapt to her feet and changed you again; called you monster, attacker. She’d clasped her bodice closed with one hand, carefully leaving bare enough pitiful juddering bosom to spark a father’s ire. She’d looked at you regretfully, sobbed crocodile tears, and spoken the lies that had made you her father’s slave for an interminable length of years.
You haven’t seen yourself in this one’s eyes yet. You need her to kiss you, to change you, to hide you from your dam. That’s what you’ve always needed. You are always awed by the ones who can work this magic. You could love one of them forever and a day. You just have to find the right one.
You stay a second in the kitchen doorway. She looks up from where she stands at the little table, briskly setting two different-sized spoons beside two mismatched bowls. She smiles. “Come on in,” she says.
You do, on your slippery feet. You sit to table. She’s still standing. “I’m sorry about that,” she says. She quirks a regretful smile at you. “I don’t think my cold sore is quite healed yet.” She runs a tongue tip over the corner of her lip, where you can no longer see the crusty scab. You sigh. “It’s all right. Forget it.” She goes over to the stove. You don’t pay any attention. You’re staring at the thready crack in your bowl.
She says, “Brown sugar or white?”
“Brown,” you tell her. “And lots of milk.” Your gut gripes at the mere thought, but milk will taint the water in which she cooked the oats. It will cloud the whisperings that water carries to your mother.
Nowadays people would say that me and my mooncalf brother, we is “lactose intolerant.” But me think say them mis-name the thing. Me think say is milk can’t tolerate we, not we can’t tolerate it.
So; he find himself another creamy one. Just watch at the two of them there, in that pretty domestic scene.
I enter, invisible.
Brother eat off most of him porridge already. Him always had a large appetite. The white lady, she only passa-passa-ing with hers, dipping the spoon in, tasting little bit, turning the spoon over and watching at it, dipping it in. She glance at him and say, “Would you like to go to the beach today?”
“No!” You almost shout it. You’re not going to the beach, not to any large body of water, ever again. Your very cells keen from the loss of it, but She is in the water, looking for you.
“A-true. Mummy in the water, and I in the wind, Brother,” I whisper to him, so sweet. By my choice, him never hear me yet. Don’t want him to know that me find him. Plenty time for that. Plenty time to fly and carry the news to Mama. Maybe I can find a way to be free if I do this one last thing for her. Bring her beloved son back. Is him she want, not me. Never me. “Ban, ban, ca-ca-Caliban!” I scream in him face, silently.
“There’s no need to shout,” she says with an offended look. “That’s where we first saw each other, and you swam so strongly. You were beautiful in the water. So I just thought you might like to go back there.”
You had been swimming for your life, but she didn’t know that. The surf tossing you crashing against the rocks, the undertow pulling you back in deeper, the waves singing their triumphant song: She’s coming. Sycorax is coming for you. Can you feel the tips of her tentacles now? Can you feel them sticking to your skin, bringing you back? She’s coming. We’ve got you now. We’ll hold you for her. Oh, there’ll be so much fun when she has you again!
And you had hit out at the water, stroked through it, kicked through it, fleeing for shore. One desperate pull of your arms had taken you through foaming surf. You crashed into another body, heard a surprised, “Oh,” and then a wave tumbled you. As you fought in its depths, searching for the air and dry land, you saw her, this woman, slim as an eel, her body parting the water, her hair glowing golden. She’d extended a hand to you, like reaching for a bobbing ball. You took her hand, held on tightly to the warmth of it. She stood, and you stood, and you realised you’d been only feet from shore. “Are you all right?” she’d asked.
The water had tried to suck you back in, but it was only at thigh height now. You ignored it. You kept hold of her hand, started moving with her, your saviour, to the land. You felt your heart swelling. She was perfect. “I’m doing just fine,” you’d said. “I’m sorry I startled you. What’s your name?”
Behind you, you could hear the surf shouting for you to come back. But the sun was warm on your shoulders now, and you knew that you’d stay on land. As you came up out of the water, she glanced at you and smiled, and you could feel the change begin.
She’s sitting at her table, still with that hurt look on her face.
“I’m sorry, darling,” you say, and she brightens at the endearment, the first you’ve used with her. Under the table, your feet are trying to paddle away, away. You ignore them. “Why don’t we go for a walk?” you ask her. She smiles, nods. The many plaits of her hair sway with the rhythm. You must ask her not to wear her hair like that. Once you know her a little better. They look like tentacles. Besides, her hair’s so pale that her pink scalp shows through.
Chuh. I’m sorry, darling. Him is sorry, is true. A sorry sight. I follow them out on them little walk, them Sunday perambulation. Down her street and round the corner into the district where the trendy people-them live. Where you find those cunning little shops, you know the kind, yes? Wild flowers selling at this one, half your wages for one so-so blossom. Cheeses from Greece at that one, and wine from Algiers. (Mama S. say she don’t miss Algiers one bit.) Tropical fruit selling at another store, imported from the Indies, from the hot sun places where people work them finger to the bone to pick them and box them and send them, but not to eat them. Brother and him new woman meander through those streets, making sure people look at them good. She turn her moon face to him, give him that fuck-me look, and take him hand. I see him melt. Going to be easy for her to change him now that she melt him. And then him will be gone from we again. I blow a grieving breeze oo-oo-oo through the leaves of the crab apple trees lining that street.
She looks around, her face bright and open. “Such a lovely day,” she says. “Feel the air on your skin.” She releases your hand. The sweat of your mingled touch evaporates and you mourn its passing. She opens her arms to the sun, drinking in light.
Of course, that white man, him only write down part of the story. Him say how our mother was a witch. How she did consort with monsters. But you know the real story? You know why them exile her from Algiers, with a baby in her belly and one at her breast?
She spins and laughs, her print dress opening like a flower above her scuffed army boots. Her strong legs are revealed to mid-thigh.
Them send my mother from her home because of the monster she consort with. The lord with sable eyes and skin like rich earth. My daddy.
An old man sitting on a bench smiles, indulgent at her joy, but then he sees her reach for your hand again. He scowls at you, spits to one side.
My daddy. A man who went for a swim one day, down, down, down, and when he see the fair maid flowing towards him, her long hair just a-swirl like weeds in the water, her skin like milk, him never ’fraid.
As you both pass the old man, he shakes his head, his face clenched. She doesn’t seem to notice. You hold her hand tighter, reach to pull her warmth closer to you. But eventually you’re going down, and you know it.
When my mother who wasn’t my mother yet approach the man who wasn’t my father yet, when she ask him, “Man, you eat salt, or you eat fresh?” him did know what fe say. Of course him did know. After his tutors teach him courtly ways from since he was small. After his father teach him how to woo. After his own mother teach him how to address the Wata Lady with respect. Sycorax ask him, “Man, you eat salt, or you eat fresh?”
And proper proper, him respond, “Me prefer the taste of salt, thank you please.”
That was the right answer. For them that does eat fresh, them going to be fresh with your business. But this man show her that he know how fe have respect. For that, she give him breath and take him down, she take him down even farther.
She take him down into her own castle, and she feed him the salt foods she keep in there, the fish and oysters and clams, and him eat of them till him belly full, and him talk to her sweet, and him never get fresh with her. Not even one time. Not until she ask him to. Mama wouldn’t tell me what happen after that, but true she have two pickney, and both of we shine copper, even though she is alabaster, so me think me know is what went on.