Trinidad Noir

by Lisa Allen-Agostini

  “No. What?”

  “I work in the night.”

  “Where, KFC?”

  “KFC don’t sell roast fowl.”

  Carl stared. “Effie, don’t tell me you working on the streets. Why?”

  “My mother started bringing her men home to have a time with me when she was pregnant with my last sister. I couldn’t concentrate on my schoolwork again. I hated them big sweaty men. I used to feel dirty when I went to school, so I drop out. It’s two years now. After a while I decided to earn my own money. I get accustomed to the life now.”

  Carl felt the pain behind Effie’s bravado. He easily recognized it, having seen so much of it in prison. He had acted the part himself until he had decided to accept and deal with his reality. He sensed Effie was in no mood for a lecture, least of all from him. He made a mental note to find a time to give her that lecture. Pictures of the pretty brown-skinned girl, her wavy hair pulled back into a ponytail, flashed in his mind. He could hardly believe this was the same girl. Effie had straightened her hair. It fell straggly around her face whose once chubby cheeks were now sunken. Sadly, he realized how much older she looked than her approaching seventeenth birthday. He made a silent vow to make a difference in at least one life.

  “Girl, you couldn’t go by anybody for help?”

  “I beg some friends to stay by them, but she used to come around and curse in front of they house. My friends tell me I have to go back. She used to meet me outside my school and slap me up, so I moved out a few times.”

  “Nobody tell the school principal?”

  “I didn’t tell my friends the real reason I wanted to leave. I used to feel shame. I wouldn’t tell my principal that. Only Maggie from next door to your aunt suspect, and when she ask me, I tell her everything.”

  “Maggie!”

  “Yes. I know she doing the same thing, so I feel comfortable talking to her. I started going to Woodbrook with her. She show me how to operate.”

  “So what your mother doing these days?”

  “She still working the QRC area. I don’t go by her territory, and she don’t come by mine, except when she want to slap me up for some stupid reason.”

  “What you call a stupid reason?”

  “Just imagine, a few nights ago she made a big scene in front of my friends, accusing me of stealing money she had in a radio to pay for the new fridge. I didn’t even know she hide money in the radio. She tear my dress. In any case, I already gave her money to pay for the fridge. She just like to take advantage,” Effie said, her voice betraying her hopelessness. Carl looked beyond Effie’s face to the apartments opposite, to the mildewed walls and peeling paint, and the exuberant feeling of freedom he had felt earlier faded.

  Early-morning light struggled to overcome a steady rain. A woman walked along Besson Street to Piccadilly Street on her way to work, sheltering the rain with an umbrella. She bumped into a man leaning over the wall of the Dry River. Startled, she stepped aside and apologized. The man fell heavily to the ground but he uttered no sound. When she saw that his shirt was blood-soaked, and that the blood had run down the wall and mixed with the rain to form a red puddle on the pavement, she screamed. Then she ran to the next corner and stopped. Her screams had been heard. People started trickling from apartments. Soon a small crowd gathered, and the woman edged back to see the body. It was a young man.

  “He not from around here. Anybody know him?” someone asked.

  “I don’t recognize him.” A woman with her hair in rollers stepped into the street to walk around the body.

  “It’s a good thing my heart isn’t bad, or Lord, I would have fall dead too. I bounce the man leaning on the wall and he fall boup on the pavement.”

  “So it’s you who scream?” the woman in curlers asked.

  “Yes, it was me,” declared the woman. “My hair stand up straight on my head. I am still shaking. Oh-oh, look. The police cars coming. I didn’t see and I don’t know.” She left to take up her 7 a.m. shift. With the police on the scene, the crowd thinned. But the body was still there when more city dwellers awoke and children wended their way to school. Three hours later, the DMO arrived to declare him dead.

  “I gave you a contract and the man is still alive,” a voice hissed. “You killed the wrong man. I want the job done. I don’t expect to have this conversation again.”

  Sheldon was shocked to overhear this conversation from his boss’s office. He was certain his boss thought the office was empty. He slipped noiselessly out the door and found himself walking more briskly than usual to City Gate where he clambered up the stairs of the transit hub and descended quickly down the exit to the Maloney maxi-taxis. He pushed among the crowd to get a seat in the first one that drove up. He sat at a window and jerked slightly as the taxi pulled from the line. Soon they were speeding up the priority bus route. He smiled wryly as he reflected that he, who was always advising young men in his neighborhood to keep away from crime, was working with someone involved in criminal activity. He pondered his next step. He needed the job, but he knew he would be uneasy in the office after what he had overheard.

  As the houses of Maloney Garden came into view, Sheldon mused at the contrast between the serene rows of pastel buildings and the violence in the community. Hardly tranquil, an air of controlled rage foamed, seethed into a fog that enveloped the area and followed the bad boys like a dark cloud. Sheldon strove to be in Maloney but not of Maloney. He prided himself on being a role model to the youth of the community simply by getting a job and going to work every day.

  When he reached his stop, Sheldon found Carl sitting on a culvert opposite the small shop at the corner near Carl’s home. Carl listened to Sheldon and felt in his heart that he knew how his friend felt.

  “Who my boss had a hit out on, and for what?” Sheldon wondered aloud.

  Carl shrugged. Sheldon knew he could no longer work there. A familiar car was speeding toward them. It was his oldest brother’s car. Actually, Balo was his half-brother. In her teens, Sheldon’s mother had become pregnant, and Balo had become a father figure for Sheldon.

  Balo pulled over and jumped out, shouting, “They— kidnap—Reshi!” His panic was palpable as the words spurted from his mouth in gasps. He was sweating and his large frame trembled. Reshi had been on his way to meet his sister at school yesterday. He never turned up. Today, Balo had gotten a call for ransom.

  “Sheldon, come with me. I want to go and search.”

  Sheldon was stunned. “Search where?”

  “I get some tips, so I going on that.”

  “You call the police?”

  “No. The kidnappers say don’t involve the police or they will kill Reshi.”

  “You want us to go looking just so, without protection or anything?”

  “You forget I am a businessman. I have a gun. That is protection. I more damn vex than anything.”

  Sheldon was worried. “Balo, I want to help, but this sounding out of my range.”

  “That is your nephew they have, boy. Both of you grow like brothers. Listen!” Balo clicked voice mail on his phone. Sheldon and Carl listened to the message, then Balo replayed it.

  Sheldon turned to Carl who had said nothing. “You would come with us?”

  “I know people who do that kind of work,” Carl replied slowly. “I don’t want to be on that run nah, Sheldon.”

  “Who side you on? Your old bandit friends or decent people?” Sheldon demanded.

  “Call the police. That is the best plan. If they want to kill, they will kill, police or not,” Carl reasoned.

  Balo was livid. “No police, no police! I will go alone if I have to!”

  Sheldon followed Balo into the car. He sat in front and looked at Carl as Balo started the engine. Reluctantly, Carl got up, walked to the car, and got in.

  “I gave you some time. You make a new plan yet? This is the last time I calling you on this.”

  “I already made the hit and I expect the rest of my payment, just like the last tim
e. You gave me a name and I killed the man. And I took serious risk to leave him where he would be seen so close to my home.”

  “That’s the only thing you got right.”

  “I was even in the crowd after he was found this morning.”

  “You’ll get paid when you complete the job.”

  “My job complete. He was driving a red car just as you said. I even did as you suggested and made a call about a kidnap to throw them off the scent for a while.”

  “You got the right name, but the wrong man,” Sheldon’s boss barked into the phone.

  “To get the right man will mean a new job and new pay,” Marlon insisted.

  “Don’t cross me, boy. But I can compromise. I’ll make a partial. Meet me at the usual in twenty minutes.”

  Marlon hung up his mobile phone. He locked the apartment door, and as he started downstairs, Effie approached.

  “Marlon, if you don’t have all the money now, just give me some. I see customers coming all the time. You must have it.” She collected some of the profits from the drugs she had given him to sell.

  Effie and Marlon walked out of his building. Marlon was talking on his phone again. A car slowed just as they reached the pavement. The front passenger window rolled down and shots rang out. Marlon grabbed Effie and used her as a shield. She slumped in his arms, bleeding from the neck. He let her go and ran back to the building, collecting three bullets in his back.

  Didn’t expect to get two birds with one shot. Hope she made good use of the money and coke she robbed me, the driver of car number PVM 2025 thought as he pulled away. He had been surprised to see Effie and felt a tinge of regret, if only for a moment. Sheldon’s boss did not like to be challenged. He knew Marlon would be nearing their meeting place and was right on target for perfect aim. Getting Effie in the bargain was almost unreal to him.

  As Balo’s car turned onto Prince Street, a piercing scream cut through the air. Before the apartment building, Ms. Noble threw herself on Marlon’s body. “He was a good boy!” she cried, beating her arms on the paved yard. “He was a loving son. Why? Why?” Then Carl saw Effie lying on the pavement and sprang from the car. He knelt and cradled her head, weeping uncontrollably. He felt cheated of his chance to reform Effie. It was too late now to ask Marlon about the kidnapping. Carl had recognized Marlon’s voice on the ransom message.

  “Three for the day,” one onlooker from the gathering crowd observed. Instinctively, Balo inquired about the other. A third corpse had been found dead leaning over the Dry River. He and Sheldon sped to the Forensic Science Centre, where that body had been sent. The pathologist opened a large metal drawer and rolled out Reshi’s bloody body. Balo’s hand tightened around the gun in his pocket before he fainted.

  GITA PINKY MANACHANDI

  BY TIPHANIE YANIQUE

  Chaguaramas

  The children’s coffins are from West Africa. He imports them. They are in shapes that a child’s body would be happy to lie in—living or dead. One is shaped like a sneaker. It sits in the middle of the room as though a giant lost it in a stroll through the building. It is white and has a Nike swoosh on the side. The laces are made of cloth, but the rest of it is made of wood. There is also a lollipop one, the candy part painted in blue and green and yellow swirls, the stick—where the child’s legs would go—painted an authentic bone-white. Corban’s favorite is the airplane coffin. It has only one wing. It’s a tiny replica of the BWIA Tri-Star in the military museum further down the peninsula. Many years ago the coffin was commissioned by a family who didn’t need it when their son recovered. It’s a coffin for a one-armed child. He likes it because he knows no one will ever buy it.

  The store is never crowded, so often, when the proprietor, Anexus Corban, and his friend, Father Simon Peter, are there together, they can talk as candidly as two men with unforgivable secrets. Simon is not from the island. He’s from a little hot country he cannot forget. The coffins here remind him of home. Simon Peter sits at the stool reserved for him. “How is business, Corban?” The answer is always the same. “Well, you know, Father.” He doesn’t say this flippantly. Corban is Catholic and believes priests are magic men—they are clairvoyant, they are conjurers and soothsayers. “You bring me luck. Without you, this place would be looking to close down.” And Father Simon always says the same thing: “My friend, don’t worry. When the good Lord takes people, He likes it if they bring some art with them.” But before they can go through this usual routine, two girls in school uniforms walk in.

  “School project,” the blonde one says as she waves her notebook at Corban. He knows they are lying. He knows that even though he is running an honest and important business, for some his shop is just a curiosity. Like everyone, the girls are attracted to the children’s coffins, but the dark-haired one slinks away to the Mexican coffins that are closer to the counter, where there is less light.

  Corban comes from behind the counter where he displays folded silk shrouds that look like nightgowns and tiny prayer books from every God-fearing religion he knows. He asks the girls if they need some help.

  “We’re picking our coffins,” says the brown girl.

  The other opens her eyes at her and interjects, “For a history project.”

  From the ties of their uniforms, Corban can tell they are seniors from the International School.

  Father Simon is annoyed at them. They do not go to a Catholic school. They are not supporting the shop. They are an interruption from his favorite part of the day. He tries to overcome this. “What is the topic of the assignment?”

  “Death,” the fair one says.

  “The history of death?” asks Father Simon with what sounds like disbelief.

  “The history of mourning,” the brown-skinned one says. She is thinking that this place is like a museum of death. No, no, a gallery of mourning. She sees a simple wooden coffin, the kind that devout Syrians sometimes get buried in because it is all pine. It’s all natural and will go back into the land without harm. The girl likes this idea in theory, but the coffin looks very sad to her. She cannot picture anyone she loves in it.

  Her name is Gita Manachandi. When her parents gave her that name they expected it would stay put until she married, when it would turn to her husband to rename her—last and first name both. A brand-new name for her rebirth into wifedom. But Gita did not stay put and she did not always go by her given name. And she was certain she would never go by any husband-given name either. It was not that she did not like the name Gita. It was just that early on, her best friend had begun calling her Pinky because of a mistake, as is the case with the birth of so many nicknames. Perhaps Gita too was a mistake. She became Pinky in the second grade when her family moved to the island and Leslie Dockers asked her her name and she said it timidly, sucking on her little finger. Leslie couldn’t make out the name but from then on called her Pinky. And that was that. In the classroom and in her home she was Gita. In the playground and in the street she was Pinky.

  She and Leslie Dockers were a pair. Their mothers had approved of the friendship when the girls were young because each family felt the other would help with assimilation to island life. The Manachandis thought that Leslie’s family was Creole—the white French they had heard were native to the island. The Dockers thought Gita was a Trini Indian. But neither family was actually from the island—the Manachandis were from Mumbai by way of Toronto and the Dockers were from Leeds. By the time anyone began to question the need for this friendship, it was too late.

  Now Leslie is caressing the satin lining of the lush Virgin coffin as though she might climb in. It is open to show the brown Virgin de Guadalupe emblazoned on the inside. Leslie stares at the image as though she knows the woman. Then she realizes that this Virgin looks like her friend’s dead mother. She stands in front of it so Pinky cannot see.

  But Pinky has wandered over to the airplane coffin with her pen and notebook ready. She stoops down to better see into the tiny glass windows. She puts her fingers into the coffi
n via the emergency exit door and touches the soft inside. Corban thinks she might get her finger stuck. It has happened before. He clears his throat.

  “It’s so small and perfect,” Gita says, removing her hand with a slow reverence. “There’s even a cockpit in there by where the head would go. How much it cost?”

  “A lot,” answers Corban guardedly.

  But Pinky is bolder than she seems. She lingers as though she were a real customer. She asks questions like, “What kind of person would buy a one-winged plane? Where did you get it? When people come in, do they bargain?” Then she pulls out her money and buys some marigolds in a tiny clear box. They are fresh and soft.

  The flowers are the same color as the gold satin of the Virgin coffin, and when Gita slips one of them in her hair, Father Simon feels a shiver between his shoulder blades and warmth at the back of his knees. This girl looks like the Virgin.

  “It’s so beautiful in here,” Pinky says, as Leslie hisses at her to leave. “It’s like art.” The girls are on their way to get ready for dancing.

  Gita was pretty smart by all definitions, but no one thought there was anything special about this. She was a hard worker. She studied with the ferocity of someone in love. And this was special. She was respected for her tenacity by the American and Trinidadian teachers and sought out for guidance by students. Her parents, who imagined her growing up to be someone important’s wife, approved because her study habits meant she would be a desirable catch—a woman who could bear smart and studious sons. Gita did not see it this way. She imagined that she was growing up to be an obstetrician-gynecologist. In her dreams, she treated the poor Indian women from South and slipped them birth control while their husbands waited in the lounge. Gita was often mistaken even by Trinis for being Trini. Her parents thought this was a bit of an insult. They had never cut cane. They had never been indentured. Those island Indians had children who spoke loose and didn’t go to Hindu classes on Saturdays. The girls didn’t think twice to date African or Syrian boys. But Pinky did not take it this way.