“Morning, Sister Love. Morning, Papa Love! Morning, Princess! Precious! Zion! Livity!”
I wave at the army of small children sitting on the tiny veranda. The track narrows and gets rockier. I use my hand to push the bushes out of my way. Elisha says to make sure I don’t touch the pepperbush and put my finger in my eyes. We duck out into a clearing with a big concrete structure. On the veranda the residents of the poorhouse sit and stare at the horizon. The old men and women are drooling and falling out of their chairs. One man is not wearing any clothes. He grabs his crotch and screams at us. A big woman in a pink uniform grabs him by the hand and drags him inside. He screams and begs us to please help him.
“Them killing me in here! Help! Help! Them a murder me! Come, little girls, come save your grandfather.”
Elisha tells me to mind my own business and stop watching them. I follow her to the gate and we cross the road and enter Cornwall from the back gate. Their school grounds are much bigger than ours. The big field stretches from one side of the school compound to the next. We walk around the field. There is a group of boys standing by the water fountain. From far away they all look like Delano, with their fair skin and jet-black hair. As we get closer I begin to see small differences between them. One boy has little red spots all over his face. Another has a gap between his teeth. One of them has blue eyes.
Delano has his back to me, so I see him before he sees me. I don’t know why I cannot call out to him. One of the boys says something to him and he turns. I wave. He waves back. I continue walking and he turns back to his friends.
“Elisha, that one is my brother.”
“Which one?”
“The one with his hair part in the middle.”
“So why you don’t call to him?”
“Nothing. You don’t see that him busy? He is in high school. He has a lot of things on his mind. Him don’t have time to idle with primary school children.”
We walk through Mount Alvernia. All the girls are lined up for devotion. Everywhere you look is the white of uniforms. They stand straight up and sing the hymns so nicely. I wish I were going to Mount Alvernia. When I take the Common Entrance I hope I pass for Mount Alvernia.
At Chetwood during lunch Delroy and Donna take my biscuits, my icy-mints, and my drops and distribute everything among their friends. Donna pulls my hair every time Miss McBean turns her back. One day she pulls it so hard, bits of it come out in her hand. The roots sting and I rub the scalp to make sure I am not bleeding. She is much bigger than me, so I cannot fight her. Tears well up in my eyes, but I do not let them fall. I bite my lips and take deep breaths. I am so tired of everybody doing what they want with me. Andy, Auntie, my mother, even Delano can just stop talking to me and I have to just take it. I wish I could turn around and stab Donna in the eyes with my pencil. My face gets hotter and hotter. But I know that I would just get into trouble if I hit her. Miss McBean would think it was my fault. I take more deep breaths until my face cools down. When I am able to speak, I turn around and face her.
“You know something, Donna? Everybody knows you are a slut because you have her period already. And you are only ten!”
Her face freezes and the tufts of hair in her hand fall to the floor.
“You know that when you have your period you can get pregnant? If you know what is good for you, you would stop looking at Delroy Johnson!”
She rushes at me and kicks me in the shin.
“Go on, kick me, Donna. That doesn’t change how you smell stink when you have it. You smell so stink that even the girls over Mount Alvernia can smell your dirty red-up, red-up panties. If I was you, I would stay home when it comes! I would stay home and wash myself with bleach! And by the way, everybody in the class can see the bunched-up pad in your pantie when you are skipping in the schoolyard!”
I look at her stricken face and drive the final words home. “Go on, ask anybody. Why you think nobody eat from your dirty period hands on certain days of the month?”
She bawls so pitifully that Miss McBean hugs her and begs her to say what is wrong.
I take my first beating from Miss McBean in absolute silence. “You think you are a big person, eh? You don’t believe I can make you cry?”
The flesh on her upper arm shakes as she delivers the blows. My skin contracts when the belt connects. I stand before her with dry eyes. After seventeen licks, she gives up.
“You are the dead stamp and seal of the living Devil.”
She wraps the leather belt around her hand and tells the other children that anyone caught speaking to me for the rest of the day would get even more licks than she just gave me.
Broomie! Broomie! Who say the Broomie?” I trip over myself dashing to the front gate to see the smiling, bowing Rastafarian everyone calls the Dread. Every week he brings peppers. And when it is pumpkin season he brings the striped green produce in a basket. Auntie says that the Dread would sell his mother if he knew people would pay for her. Everybody talks bad about the Dread, but everybody buys from him because his wares are cheap. His goods are also fresher than the produce from the market. The market women have to travel all the way from the country in the hot sun with their callaloo. But the Dread just picks it from his front yard. If you buy more than one item from the Dread, you get a big discount. And plus, he delivers the goods right to your door. Occasionally, we buy brooms.
Dreadie, the callaloo man, makes music of his wares.
Eillaloo, eiper, and yumpkin.
Eillaloo, who need the eillaloo?
Who have need of the eillaloo, eiper, and yumpkin man?
He lifts the brooms down from his head before he bows and speaks to me. “Hello, little bright-eye princess, where is the imperial queen of this house? I have some royal-quality callaloo for this house of kings and queens and prince and princess.”
“Hello. Auntie is inside, but she say she don’t want anything today.”
“All right, sweet princess, maybe next time the queen will buy from the Dread.”
His smile is flawless as he hoists the bundle back on his head, singing.
Eillaloo, eiper, and yumpkin.
Eillaloo, who need the eillaloo?
Who have need of the eillaloo, eiper, and yumpkin man?
I sing along. When Glen hears me, he starts laughing. “Yes, man, Stacey, practice up you song, because that is what you will have to do when you get big. You going to have to married de rastaman and sell broom with him on Saturday and Sunday. Nobody going married to you with your big mouth and your dirty sheet them. You can’t even wash you own clothes properly, plus you too stink and ugly fi get married to anybody good.”
Andy is quick to join in. “Yes, man, Glen! And the way how she cook is just right fi de rastaman style, no salt, no pork, no taste, no nutten but a bellyache! No man no want no woman who can’t cook. Stacey, it make sense you just go drown yuh-self, or find a rastaman husband! There is nothing else left fi a woman like you.”
Diana leans over the rail. “Lawd, man. Oonu no get tired of teasing her? And even if nobody want to married her, it is none of oonu business! Oonu is her cousins, so who she married is not oonu concern.”
Andy tosses a mango seed at her. “I know she is me cousin, but you never hear the saying that ‘cousin and cousin make good soup’? If her big head of hair wasn’t so knot-up and dirty, me would take pity on her and married to her right now!”
Auntie opens her bedroom door and sends Diana back inside. “All right, all right! Oonu leave her alone! She will learn fi cook in time and then God will send her a good husband.”
I tell them I do not want to marry anybody. Auntie laughs and disappears into her room. Andy says he is sorry for the man who will have to marry me. I tell him if these men in the house are any examples of the men out there in the world, I will kill the man before I marry anybody. He tells me to wait and see what happens to me after I get my period. Then I will start begging for a man to look at me and touch me.
“You must be God to know w
hat will be inside my head! I don’t like nobody touching me anywhere! Nobody at all! The things that them worthless men want to do to a girl is nasty! And if anybody ever try that with me I will get a gun and shoot them!”
Andy laughs and says I will change my mind.
The next day while I am in the kitchen getting a glass of water Andy pushes me up against the wall and slides his hands up under my dress. I am so shocked I can’t move my mouth to say anything. He presses his crotch into my belly and asks me if I like it. I push him away and call out to Auntie. He lets me go and Auntie rushes in to ask why I am bawling out her name like a loudspeaker. I tell her that Andy wouldn’t let me go.
“What you mean, him wouldn’t let you go?”
“Auntie, I was just passing him and him squeeze me up on the wall. And then him hold on to me and wouldn’t let me go.”
“Mama, is brush me brush ’gainst her when me pass. The place small and she walk wide like a duck.”
“Stacey, me not going tell you again. Stop calling me for everything. You are not a princess or a baby. You cannot call me-call me, for foolishness. If him brush you by accident, just say sorry and go your way. Mark my words, if you call me again for no stupidness I going to pull out that leather belt and beat you. And what happen to your hair? Why it look like a fowl nest?”
Andy is grinning at me behind Auntie’s back. After that I try my best to avoid him. I stick close to Glen or Elisha if he is in the house. And I make sure that Grace locks our bedroom door at night.
Two weeks before Christmas, Grace goes away with Elisha’s father. They take Elisha with them. I lock the door and wrap the sheet around my body three times before I go to sleep.
I am dreaming that I am drowning. The water closes over me and I cannot catch my breath. I wake up gasping for air. There is something crawling around in my panties. I open my eyes to find Andy on top of me. One hand is covering my nose. His mouth is over mine. The fingers of the other hand are in my panties, pushing themselves into my coco-bread. His nails are hurting me. He moans something unintelligible against my mouth. At first I don’t understand. Then he says it again.
“You like it, eh, Stacey? You like this? Tell me you don’t like it.”
His voice breaks the spell. I reach for my pencil on the bedside table and drive the point into his hand. He lets go of my nose and I scream.
The whole house is awake in minutes. Glen is laughing at me cowering in the corner. Diana looks in and quietly slips away. Shappy says everybody should stop providing an audience to Jezebel and go back to sleep. No one asks me what happened. No one wants to know what Andy is doing in my bed at two in the morning. Auntie drags me to the veranda and pushes me into a chair. “I don’t know what is wrong with you! But it going to stop tonight!”
“Nothing is wrong with me, Auntie! Is your nasty son have something wrong with him!”
“What that you say to me?”
“Auntie, is him come in the room with me. I never invited him into me bed.”
“Stacey, lemme tell you something. If you do not say anything to Andy, if you keep away from him and walk him out, things will go better for you. I think him just bother you because you do not have any manners to him.”
“Auntie, how me must have manners to him, when him want to come do what him want with me when you not looking? If him come near me again I going to stab him with a knife! I swear to God, Auntie, if him come near me, I going to kill him!”
I do not see Auntie’s hand snake out. But I feel the sting of her palm across my face.
“Hear what me telling you, Stacey. You are no bull-buck and duppy-conquerer in this house. And I cannot sit here with you, no matter what him do—I cannot sit here with you and listen to you talk about taking the life of one of my children. After all I do for you?” She stands up to her full height over me. “Just stay clear of Andy and don’t provoke him anymore! Now get out of me face and go back to you bed!”
Back in the room I put on an extra pair of panties. The moon, fat and heavy, peeks in through the glass louvers. The yellow light makes a funny pattern on the bed. I carefully wrap the sheet around my body again. Then I lie down across the bottom of the locked door.
The Word Became Flesh
I feel like I have hit gold when I find three dirty picture magazines in the pile of abandoned books under the house. I dust them off to reveal a series of blondes wearing very small brassieres over their very large breasts. I read about women who are excited to discover the orgasm.
None of the women have any clothes on—and all of them have their legs wide open. I look at the pictures of them rubbing their coco-breads with shiny red fingernails. It is all very strange and exciting. My heart is beating fast and then slow and then fast again. In some of the pictures the women look happy and sad at the same time, as if they were eating an ice-cream cone that is not really their favorite flavor.
Looking at the photographs makes me want to touch myself too. And I want to know if my coco-bread looks the same as those in the magazine. I decide the only way to find out is to have a look. I choose the one place nobody would find me. The pit toilet. Day after day it stands empty until there is a water lock-off. Not much more than a woodshed built over a twenty-foot concrete-covered sewage receptacle, the pit toilet is so small that only a makeshift toilet seat of wood can fit inside. And it smells like milk farts all the time.
I look down into the hole. There are giant roaches crawling up the inner walls of the seat. I look farther down. Bits of things are floating in what looks like a big black swimming pool. I climb up onto the seat and slowly squat. My naked bottom hangs over the gigantic opening of the square toilet. I carefully examine my coco-bread. There are tiny black hairs and some little things that look like tiny mouths keeping a big secret. I push the mouths open. The tongue pokes out at me. I poke the tongue and the lips get wet. I poke the tongue again. And again. And again. The lips get wetter and wetter and wetter. I am bouncing up and down so much my foot slips and I fall into the pit.
My right leg and right arm are both completely in. The left arm is grasping at the side of the seat. The left leg is caught in a strange angle that has just barely kept me from falling all the way in. I can’t call anyone to help me. The dirty magazine is sprawled out open on the floor with Deviled Daisy’s bottom cheeks separated by the spine of the open pages. Luscious Lily’s lips are throwing kisses at me.
The stench from the waste below makes it difficult to breathe, and there are things I cannot see crawling along my foot. My palms sweat and make it almost impossible to get a firm grip on the wood. It takes me nearly an hour to drag myself up from out of the mouth of the pit. When I finally collapse, shaking and picking pieces of roach legs off my hip and thigh, I know I am never going to look at my coco-bread again.
Andy tells me that I am the ugliest girl he has ever seen in his life. He has been teasing me for nine months now, so I know better than to get into an argument with him. I make my way down to the small concrete receptacle known as the fish tank. The square is set deep into the dark red soil of the front yard. Hidden under the alcove created by the kissing tops of the sweetsop, breadfruit, and mango trees, the fish tank protrudes a foot or so out from the ground.
I peer down at my reflection and wonder if I am really that ugly. I wish I could make my hair smooth the way Grandma used to do it. I drop a small stone and watch the untidy image of my head break into a million little pieces. Auntie likes to boast about the days when fish used to swim in the once-clear water, but now only the slimy moss moves through the tank.
Auntie leans over the veranda rail and watches me toss another rock in. “Stacey, you see how oonu children treat that fish tank? God going to sin every one of yuh for how oonu destroy that good, good fish tank.”
Glen comes running from behind the house. “Yes, Mama, them really treat the fish tank bad.”
“If oonu was a different set of children, there would be goldfish and tadpoles and all kind of fish running about in the t
ank! You see them children on the TV from Africa? God know them would kill themselves for a little niceness like this fish tank.”
I am quick to correct her. “Auntie, the children in Africa need clean water! Not this nasty, dirty stink-hole that don’t even have no fish in there!”
“Stacey, come up here, make me box you in your face! You don’t have no manners, eh? Which child would not want to have a fish tank? You stay there, the time will come when you will look back and see how much the good Lord has given to you in your young days.”
It is still morning, but the day already feels hot and long. Elisha joins me on the metal plant stand and offers two of her four sweetsops. We suck at the sticky fruit and toss the seeds into the dark, thick water below.
Before long, we are bored with the small plunk, plunk, plunk as the seeds and handfuls of sweetsop skins crash into the water. Elisha jumps down from the plant stand and swishes a stick around slowly in the viscous water.
“Stacey, you think this water was ever clean like how Mama say it was?”
“Everybody is always talking ’bout how everything was always better before we born. But I think them just say that to make them feel like them know better things than us.”
“Maybe if we clean it we can put fish to live in there.”
“I not sure no fish can live in there, but I suppose we can clean it. Is not as if we have anything else to do.”
Plunk. I throw a rock in the water and tell Elisha to listen for when it hits the bottom. She says she doesn’t hear anything.
“Stacey, how deep you think it is in there?”
“There is too much rubbish on the bottom for me to tell. Maybe when we clean it out and we could see how deep it really is.”
The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir Page 14