The Heart Does Not Bend

by Makeda Silvera

  “Gatty, before yuh leave, yuh want a taste of de whites?” I heard Mama asking Miss Gatty. But the question was just a formality. Every Saturday afternoon, after the washing and baking, they turned to women talk on the verandah, their throats eased by a flask of white rum, ice and a bit of water to chase it.

  “So, how Mr. Mikey doing?”

  “Him doing good. Him get a job wid some big-shot dressmaker-designers.”

  “Dat real nice,” Miss Gatty said, pouring herself a shot of rum. “Dat nice.”

  Then Mama lowered her voice. “Ah only hope to God him find a nice girl soon. Ah can’t tell nuh lie, ah really worry sometimes.…”

  Her voice drifted off. Then I heard her say, “Molly?” I stayed behind the curtains, not wanting to be discovered, and she went on. “Gatty, ah don’t know how him turn so. Ah love him wid all mi heart, but ah wish him was more like Peppie. Even like Freddie, God forgive mi. Yuh know, a little more manly, especially in de voice.”

  “So him never interested in girls, Miss Maria?”

  “Never. From him born him different. Him tek him whole physical features off Mammy, same small bone, all him have from him father and me is de blackness, nutten else. If mi never give birth to him meself, ah would a think him is a jacket. But mi know mi never unfaithful to Oliver Galloway.”

  “Miss Maria, look at it dis way: it might all be a part of God’s plan.”

  “Gatty, don’t talk nonsense, what kinda plan? Mi sacrifice too much already to be curse wid dis. A mi son and mi love him, but mi not Mary and him not Jesus. Mi nuh want him fi bear any cross, for de mother always feel it, and mi load too heavy already. From mi born mi bad luck.” With that, my grandmother poured herself another rum.

  “Him different from him born,” she repeated. “When Peppie a fly kite and knock marble, Mikey playing dolly house wid Glory. When him turn teenager, him tek to de sewing machine more than Glory.”

  “Him will change,” Miss Gatty reassured her. “In time him will see is not a normal way to be.”

  “But Gatty, de bwoy near twenty-one, what chance him have to change?”

  “Miss Maria, sometimes things have a way of turning. Him young, him have him whole life in front of him and as me Maroon granny use to say, ‘What nuh dead, nuh dash wey.’”

  “Dat is true,” Mama said, but she was not convinced.

  I’d never thought about Uncle Mikey’s lack of interest in girls. He and Uncle Freddie never got along. They often fought, but I thought that was just what brothers did.

  Miss Gatty left shortly after, her hands clutching two cloth bags filled with ackee, avocados and fruits from our yard.

  The first letter we received after Uncle Freddie left came not from him, but from Uncle Peppie.

  Dear Mama,

  I hope this letter find you in good health. Freddie arrive safe and sound. He got a part-time job as a packer in the same factory as Glory about a month ago. I am still working in the autobody repair shop and that going good, I learning a lot about European cars.

  Thank you for the escoveitch fish. Glory and me eat it off in less than a week. As always the fruitcake was nice-nice, it make me miss home even more. Enclose you will find a money order to help with things. Give my love to Mammy, Aunt Ruth, Aunt Joyce, Molly and everybody else.

  I remain your faithful son,

  Peppie

  Mama folded the letter and the money order and tucked them in her bosom.

  “Freddie get a job,” she said proudly. “Ah think foreign will do him good.” Then in a disgruntled tone she added, “But you think him would at least write mi.” She shook her head and lit a cigarette.

  “Come, let we go change de money order. God bless Peppie, him is really a good son, him and Mikey.”

  That night we went to the movies, our usual routine on a Friday. The Ritz Theatre was just a mile away, an easy walk. Kingston was a safe city back then. Sometimes we went to the Majestic Theatre instead, but tonight it was the Ritz and Sophia Loren, my grandmother’s favourite actress. The Millionaires was playing. We took our seats in the front row, ate warm peanuts from the shell and waited for the lights to go down. I fell asleep in her lap before the movie ended, but it didn’t matter what the storyline was, for like Mama, I had fallen in love with Sophia. We made our way out of the theatre, hands folded into each other’s, and stopped off at Olive’s Hideaway for refreshments, rum for my grandmother and a pineapple drink for me. Uncle Mikey was already home when we got in. Mama talked endlessly about Sophia Loren and her beautiful dresses. My uncle indulged her with his wide, beautiful smile, but he didn’t care much for Sophia Loren. Audrey Hepburn was his all-time favourite movie star.

  I fell asleep that night in Mama’s lap, listening to their chatter. I could see how different Freddie and Mikey were. Freddie loved Audie Murphy, Alan Ladd and John Wayne and outdoor sports. Mikey stayed indoors and was partial to sewing and planning dinner parties. The one passion they shared was music, but even in that they had different tastes. Freddie loved rocksteady, Duke Reid and Sir Coxsone, Prince Buster and street dances. Mikey loved American R&B, Johnny Mathis, Jackie Edwards, Little Richard and Frank Sinatra ballads.

  It was only after Freddie left that Uncle Mikey started having parties at our house on the first Sunday of every month. They were small, with only ten or so guests. I stayed in my Sunday-school clothes and my grandmother was always dressed to kill. The meals were elaborate, served in hulled coconut shells and on banana and papaya leaves.

  Paul, the dress designer Mikey worked with, was my favourite guest. He was a tall, thin, handsome man who kept his straightened black hair pulled back in a ponytail tied with a red silk scarf. He wore big colourful capes over his street clothes. Helen, Paul’s sister, who also worked in his dress shop, came too. She was tall and slender like Paul and always dressed in a red or black kimono. She piled her hair high on her head in swirls, two chopsticks holding it in place. Her skin was flawless, almost raven black. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.

  There was Nat, a guitarist and singer, and Richard, a short, muscular dancer who looked like a black Yul Brynner. George, a chef at a Chinese restaurant, sported two gold crowns in his mouth. Ken was an actor in pantomimes at the Ward Theatre in downtown Kingston. He was a very pretty man, thin and fragile, like a girl in the movies. There were the twins, Tom and Rex, who dressed in matching clothes, a couple of photographers, a painter and June, the only other woman who was a regular guest.

  Mama’s favourite was Nat. He was older than the others and resembled Uncle Peppie, cool coal-black. He played songs she knew, the mento, and the rhumba, the mambo and the bolero.

  Mama loved to dance; it was one of the few times her face relaxed. I watched her dancing to a mento beat, the hem of her dress floating above her knees, her dress hugging her Sophia Loren breasts. I wanted to dance like her when I grew up. I wanted her breasts and floating hips.

  On these occasions Uncle Mikey was happy and relaxed, too, more so than at any other time. Mama moved easily among his friends. If she had any anxieties, they surfaced when she was sitting alone on the verandah, or when Miss Gatty came on Saturdays to do the washing.

  I didn’t meet the dundus girl until weeks after she came to live next door. She was a quiet girl, who never left her yard to play. The other kids were unrelenting in their teasing. “Dundus gal, dundus gal,” they’d singsong in front of her gate or when she walked home from school. Because of that, her father built her a treehouse in their backyard, which was the envy of the street.

  We met through the fence one day when I was watering my grandmother’s flower bed.

  “Hey, gal, what yuh name?” I asked, spraying the hose on her.

  She didn’t flinch, just stood there staring me down. I sprayed her again and then ran off. She made me uneasy with her white-white face and pale, wide-open eyes.

  A few days later she came to the fence and called out to me.

  “Petal, mi name Petal. Yuh want to come ove
r?”

  I shrugged as if I was quite indifferent.

  “Yuh don’t want to see de treehouse?”

  “Yes, ah guess so,” I answered lazily, and crawled under the barbed-wire fence into her yard. We climbed up to the treehouse using a ladder made of thick rope. I was sitting on the floor thinking about what it would be like to have the treehouse for a bedroom when she asked me, “Yuh want to see something?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I answered, only half-interested.

  “Yuh promise not to tell?”

  “Tell what?” I asked.

  “Yuh have to swear on yuh granny grave dat yuh won’t tell.”

  I hesitated, but curiosity got the best of me. “Ah swear.”

  “Swear on what?” she insisted, staring into my face.

  “Ah swear on mi granny grave.”

  “Now swear on yuh mother grave. Wey she deh?”

  “Canada.”

  “Well, swear on her grave.”

  I swore. Petal took out a matchbox from the pocket of her yellow calico dress. Slowly she opened it, revealing a live grasshopper feeding on grass. She stared at me again, shutting the box.

  “Yuh mek mi swear on mi granny grave for dat?” I asked angrily. I sucked my teeth like my grandmother did and got up to climb down the rope.

  “Wait, ah only joking wid yuh.” She grinned. “Yuh ‘ave nice eyes.”

  I couldn’t find anything complimentary to say about hers, so I just looked into them. She fiddled with the matchbox, and the grasshopper tried to escape as she opened and closed the lid; all the time she looked straight at me. I didn’t like it one bit. I wanted her to be like Punsie, who filled our yards and our street with screams and laughter.

  “Open yuh mouth,” Petal commanded.

  “For what?”

  “Jus’ open it,” she insisted, the grasshopper dangling between her fingers.

  “Yuh is a mad gal!” I shouted.

  “Is brain food, it will mek yuh smart, and it taste good.”

  I was not convinced. “Who tell yuh dat foolishness?”

  “Mi see it on television, is brain food in America.”

  “Dat is nasty,” I said, disgusted.

  “Yuh like the treehouse?” she asked, and before I could answer, she told me I could climb the fence and use it whenever I wanted.

  “Yuh going to eat it now?” she pestered, knowing full well that I liked the treehouse.

  “Awright, only after yuh!”

  She pulled the right leg off the grasshopper and crunched it to bits between her teeth.

  “Mm-mmm,” she said, satisfaction all over her dundus face.

  She pulled off its other leg and waited patiently until I gathered enough nerve to open my mouth. Reluctantly, I bit into it. It was surprisingly crunchy and tasted almost like grass. We ate the rest of the grasshopper bit by bit. I never did tell Punsie and the others. I just said that we played games in the treehouse. I begged Petal once to let Punsie into the treehouse, but Punsie and the others had teased her too much in the past. For the next two years, until I turned eleven, Petal and I secretly ate live grasshoppers.

  Uncle Freddie had been gone almost a year, and he had never written to his mother or to Monica. He had sent Dennis shoes and a felt hat, along with a miniskirt for Monica and a pair of red booties for his baby son, a pair of pedal-pushers for Punsie and black patent-leather shoes for me. The gifts came in a Christmas parcel my mother and Uncle Peppie sent to our house. The first time Uncle Freddie wrote, it was to me. I’d just turned ten that August. I was playing marbles outside the front gate with Punsie and some of the boys from the street when the mailman rode up to our gate on his bicycle.

  “Mail from foreign, Molly!” he shouted. I scooped up the marbles I’d won and ran to take the letters from him. One was from Uncle Peppie, one from my mother and the last a birthday postcard for me from Uncle Freddie. Mama opened the two letters and separated out the two money orders, which she put in her bosom.

  “Yuh mother seh to give yuh a big kiss. She seh another parcel on de way.”

  I proudly showed her the birthday card from Uncle Freddie, with its picture of Niagara Falls. Mama’s face was glue tight, and she roughly asked, “Yuh can eat dat?”

  With that she rose from her wicker chair and stormed through the gate. I sat on the verandah, staring at her empty chair, then I crawled under the fence to Petal’s yard. I searched the grass under the treehouse for grasshoppers, found four and ate them like they were my last meal. I climbed to the treehouse and sat alone, confused by Mama’s response to the card. Petal joined me sometime later, and I let her fill my head with stories of America’s wildlife, which she’d watched on TV.

  It was pitch-dark outside when I crawled under the fence and back to our verandah. The house was empty. I waited in the dark, frightened of the bats that stuck to the ceilings. This was the first time Mama had left me on my own. Uncle Mikey soon came home.

  “Come here, Dutty Bus,” he said softly, using his special name for me. “What happen? Where Mama?” I began to cry as I relayed the story about the postcard.

  “Dat bwoy going to be her ending,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Yuh eat anything dis evening?”

  I shook my head.

  “Come let we mek a egg sandwich, and then we go find her. Don’t cry.”

  We ate scrambled eggs with hard-dough bread and a glass of milk, and then we went to Olive’s to look for Mama. She wasn’t there. Later we found her in Shady’s Hideaway. She was sitting on a chair, her head slumped on one of the Formica tables.

  Uncle Mikey pulled her to her feet, and with his hand around her waist, we walked her home. Later, as we all huddled together on the living-room couch, Mama began to talk.

  “Mikey, you and Peppie really good to mi, and we go through whole heap together. Ah remember when ah had dat restaurant downtown years before we buy dis place, is you and Peppie helping me. Unnu scrub pot, wipe de floor, carry de heavy meat, de big crocus bags full a green banana and yam. Freddie and Glory was still in Port Maria wid Mammy. Dem never know ’bout dem hardships, for ah mek sure ah send money every month fi dem. De only thing ah couldn’t provide fi any of you was real education, ah never have dat kind a money, and ah needed you two bwoys to help me. Unnu come to town when unnu just turn teenager and unnu never fail me yet …you bwoys help mi and treat mi better dan a husband. Nutten nuh come free or easy especially fi poor people. Unnu father was a wutliss wretch, and a same way Freddie turn out. But old-time people always say when a tree bend from de beginning, it grow twist up, and him just like him father.”

  “Never mind, Mama, don’ think about all dat. We don’t want for anything now. Dat is de past,” my uncle said. His hand travelled across her back and massaged her shoulders. She began to cry, and we both hugged her.

  Much later, in bed, Mama’s hands searched for mine as she began to sing softly, her breath burdened with Wray & Nephew white overproof rum.

  My Bonnie lies over de ocean,

  My Bonnie lies over de sea,

  Oh bring back, oh bring back …

  Mama got up early the next morning. She looked tired, especially her eyes, but neither I nor Uncle Mikey said anything about the night before.

  “Mama, de garden need a little care,” my uncle said, looking through the living-room window.

  “Yes, ah know, ah try keep up wid it, but wid de baking, sometimes mi too tired. Ah will have to get somebody to look after it.”

  “Ask Grand-aunt Ruth nuh, she have ‘nuff people coming in and out of her restaurant.”

  “Yes, dat’s a good idea.” She went to the window, looked out at the garden and said, “Ah miss Freddie, truly, if only fi dat.” My uncle didn’t respond.

  The summer of 1968, when I was eleven, I saw my first restricted movie. Mama never ever missed a Sophia Loren movie, and she was not going to miss Two Women when it played in Kingston. We walked to the Ritz Theatre and saw RESTRICTED: 18 YEARS AND OLDER plastered on the billboard right besi
de Loren’s sultry lips and big breasts. Mama held my hand firmly, looked the cashier straight in the eye and bought our tickets. As usual we took seats in the front row. Before the movie started, Mama nodded at the screen. “Nutten wrong wid seeing dese movies,” she said. “There is good and bad in de world, and yuh have to see both to mek sense of things.”

  The big curtains parted and when Sophia Loren came on the screen there was a hush in the theatre. Her lips were tomato ripe, her body generous, her eyes hungry. We rode with her as she and her young daughter fled on a dirty, overcrowded train from Naples to the countryside. She was shabbily dressed, with bags and bundles on her head, but even in the midst of war, she was beautiful. Her daughter was by her side. For a moment I imagined Mama and me running from war. Sophia Loren looked so strong, she could protect her daughter from everything. Her hips swung just like Mama’s did when she carried the pastries in a cardboard box on her head to the Chinese shops.

  Suddenly Sophia Loren and her daughter were being raped by Nazi soldiers. I wanted to look away but couldn’t. Instead I held tightly to Mama’s hand. I felt the young girl’s fear and panic. Mama held me tight, saying, “Cover yuh face, put yuh head in mi lap.”

  But it was too late. I had already seen too much. As we left the theatre, a little breeze rustled and a brown-and-white stray dog yelped in the dark. I held on to Mama’s hand. The movie stayed with me for a long time.

  Grand-aunt Ruth’s restaurant was at the corner of Maxfield Avenue and Lyndhurst Road, in a piazza at the southeast corner. Mama delivered baked beef patties there twice a week, in return for a small sum of money when they were sold. The Chinese pastry shops that she supplied were nearby on Chisholm Avenue and Waltham Park Road. Sometimes, she walked over with the pastries in the morning after I had gone off to school, but it was not unusual for her to deliver them after I got home from school. Grand-aunt Ruth’s restaurant was always our last stop. We would sit outside on the piazza while Mama and Grand-aunt Ruth caught each other up on other people’s business and talked unendingly about the leftover colonial government and corrupt politicians. Aunt Joyce, who stitched uppers at Maressa Shoe Factory, often joined them after work. She never took much to cooking, so she ate her meals at the restaurant, where she often met her suitor of the month. Mama claimed that eating out every night wasn’t healthy, even though the food was cooked by Grand-aunt Ruth herself. “Normal people eat at home around a dining table.”