Blue Mountain Trouble

by Martin Mordecai

  As she was helping Mama back to the house, Jammy’s voice, cursing Poppa, floated down into the yard like pieces of dirty paper.

  * * *

  “How you feeling now?” Poppa asked. His voice was gentle, and a little anxious.

  They were sitting at the table, the four of them — Jackson having stumbled out of bed as they entered from the yard — letting Sunday’s silence settle around them.

  “Not too bad,” Mama said, patting her husband’s hand resting on the table. “But I don’t think Reverend Forsythe will be seeing me today.”

  “Me neither,” Poppa said, sounding tired himself.

  Pollyread didn’t like the sound of this. Something wrong, particularly in Mama’s gray face, which looked as though it was evening at the end of a long day, rather than barely dawn.

  Pollyread and Jackson exchanged questions. Many questions. Jackson’s was a simple one: What did I miss? Which Pollyread couldn’t answer at the moment. Her own were like heavy black flies buzzing around inside her head. Jammy hardly figured in her thoughts. Or Goat, despite the dream. They were distractions. Mama was at the center. Yesterday evening’s collapse. This morning’s vomiting. And now, too sick to go to church. Poppa staying home with her. Definitely a story there, she thought. Not a good story either, her gut told her.

  The twins generally liked going places by themselves, together or separately. Shim’s grocery, carrying messages around Valley and as far, now they were big, as Cross Point, even to Miss Brimley at the library in Cuthbert Bank (though that was farther, so they had to go together). But AME Church on their own was a different matter, nothing to do with distance. You had to be well behaved from the moment you stepped through your gate because any adult had the natural right to correct the bad-behave of any child — and, if the adult so chose, to report such behavior to a parent. (Which brought a double dose of censure: for the bad-behave and for the worse sin of “shame-me-in-the-street.”) In church itself, once service began you couldn’t fidget or whisper to other children. And there were no comforting props (in their case, Poppa; Mama sang in the choir) to lean against and catch a little doze or at least a daydream during Reverend Forsythe’s convoluted (a word she’d learned for Common Entrance) and interminable (learned on her own) sermons. Not a good scene.

  “What you was fixing to make for breakfast, Mama?” Pollyread asked, her voice bright and helpful. She tapped Jackson lightly on the head as she moved into the kitchen: Come on.

  They took, as Mama would have said if she’d noticed, their own sweet time fixing breakfast. Never had onions and tomatoes been so finely diced, never a regular-sized cabbage yielded such a mountain of finely shredded leaves. Her brother’s surgery on a fairly small chunk of saltfish made Pollyread wonder whether this was the real story behind the feeding of the five thousand. Her own fingers ached for hours after from kneading the flour, baking powder, and water for the johnnycakes. The plantain from the tree in the yard was lovingly (and slowly) sliced and carefully (and slowly) sprinkled with cinnamon for frying. All that effort yielded a meal no larger than Mama would have put together, and certainly no tastier. But what would take their mother half an hour at most occupied her painstaking children twice as long.

  Which was exactly the point. And the parents didn’t notice. Mama had been taken by Poppa to lie down and had dozed off. Poppa wandered out into the backyard and became preoccupied, as he generally did, with watering and weeding around the plants growing there. Meanwhile, as they were working, Pollyread filled Jackson in on what had happened before Cho-cho’s furious barking woke him. Their whispers danced around the question of Mama’s health. That was a dark pool of memory, which they didn’t want to put even a toe into.

  The twins were complimented on the flavorsome meal, which, after prayers of thanksgiving for the food and that Mama wasn’t harmed, proceeded almost silently. Pollyread said nothing that would draw attention to time passing. Jackson, she noticed, chewed every mouthful with unusual thoughtfulness. (A ruminant, she thought, remembering a word she had recently learned: her brother the cow. Or the goat.) She was lost in such thoughts, mingled with her wild dream and flashes of the drama with Jammy, when Mama spoke.

  “Is you him come to,” Mama said. Her voice, weak but sounding more like her own, told Pollyread that she was teasing Poppa, a good sign.

  “Me?” Poppa’s voice was a deep growl.

  “He say he want to see you about something.”

  “At this time of morning?” Valley people were early risers, but a visit at this hour was unseemly. “The only thing I want to see Jammy about at any time, I will see him about in courthouse in Town.”

  “He must be don’t have nowhere to sleep,” Mama said. Pollyread was surprised at the note of sympathy in her voice, considering what had happened less than a couple hours before.

  Poppa snorted, put down his knife and fork, and ticked off his fingers. “Him have him mother yard. Him have other family here in Valley and in the district. I hear say him have a girl in Town carrying baby for him — she must live somewhere. And him have my ground at Morgan’s Mount that him capture — him all build shelter on it. The bwoy have more place to sleep than you and me, Maisie.”

  “He never sleep nowhere inside last night, that’s for sure,” Mama said. “Dry grass and leaf tie up in his locks.”

  “All kinds of grass tie him up,” Poppa said, surprising Pollyread with a little laugh.

  “Him was high, yes,” Mama agreed. “When he come inside and I go to pick something out of his head, the bwoy step back and rail up and tell me not to touch the Lord’s anointed.” Pollyread heard that voice again in her head, thunderous and dark.

  “Is not the Lord anoint him with weed,” Poppa said.

  Mama cackled. “Is that I tell him, make him let out a string of badword I never hear the likes of before. Only from them madmen in Town.”

  “Jammy mad, yes.” Poppa said it quietly, as if summing up Jammy. There was, Pollyread thought, a sort of sadness in his voice.

  “Is why Jammy take a set on us like that?” Jackson asked before biting into his third johnnycake. “Is like he think we have something for him.”

  Poppa grumped before sipping and swallowing his coffee. “I nearly give it to him this morning.” He chuckled at his own bad joke.

  “But I don’t hear him troubling anybody else since he come back,” Jackson argued. Bollo didn’t even know his own cousin was in the district.

  Pollyread, with a shiver of anxiety, wondered if Jackson was going on to talk about their exchange with Bollo and Trucky at Standpipe the day before.

  Mama sighed a big sigh. All eyes turned to her. A wisp of a smile lifted her face. “Him was such a mannersable boy.”

  “Mannersable?” asked Jackson.

  “Who?” Pollyread asked.

  “James,” Mama said softly. She wasn’t looking at either of them, but into the past somewhere.

  Jackson’s body shifted as though he was getting up from the chair. “Jammy?” His eyes scanned Mama’s face like flashlights for something he didn’t find. He looked at his father. He was fussing with his food.

  Pollyread spoke his question: “In this house?”

  “Yes.” The word dropped from Mama’s mouth like a feather.

  The twins, speechless, locked eyes for support.

  Poppa stepped into the silence. “Maisie, you hardly touch you food.”

  Mama’s mouth corners turned down as her smile faded away. “I not tasting it.” Pollyread felt a pang of embarrassment. Which Mama sensed. “Is not the cooking, Pen,” she went on quickly, but sounding tired. “Is me. My tongue feel like cardboard.” Carefully, she took the empty plate that had held the johnnycakes and covered her own plate. “Put it on the stovetop to keep. I will eat it later.” She eased herself up from her chair and shuffled toward her bedroom.

  Then she paused in the doorway. “But wait … you pickney going be late for service at AME.”

  The twins suddenly showed an int
erest in what was left of their breakfast.

  Mama sucked her teeth and wandered inside. The twins, dutifully and quietly chewing their food, listened for the creaking of springs as Mama lay down, and the sigh as she relaxed. Then they knew they were out of danger.

  Mama sick.”

  “Oh, so you is doctor.”

  “I not a doctor. But I have eyes in my head. And ears.”

  “Big ears.”

  “Maybe so. They hear Mama throwing up the breakfast we fix.”

  “The saltfish spoil.”

  “Saltfish don’t spoil, that is why they salt it.”

  “So you is a expert on food as well as doctor.”

  “I not expert, Pel. But you know Mama sick too.”

  “How I know?”

  “You was in and out with her whole day today.”

  “Because she …”

  “Because she sick, just like I just say.”

  “She say is gas.”

  “Is not gas.”

  “How you know? You is doctor?”

  “No, but I have sense. And sense tell me is not gas Mama have.”

  “How?”

  “When Mama have gas, she make so much noise Aunt Zilla stay next door and know.”

  “I bet you I tell her what you just say.”

  “Tell her. I hear Mama say so herself. So.”

  “So what?”

  “What is really wrong with her?”

  “I supposed to know?”

  “You was inside with her the whole time when I was out and about with Poppa at ground. You never talk?”

  “Of course.”

  “So?”

  “ .”

  “So?”

  “She say I not to tell anybody.”

  “Me is not anybody.”

  “Not a living soul. That’s what she say. And you not dead.”

  “She in the way.”

  “What!”

  “Shhh.”

  “What?”

  “I think Mama is pregnant.”

  “She never tell me that.”

  “Then what she tell you?”

  “ .”

  “Tell me I wrong.”

  “You wrong.”

  “That is what I think. And I think you think so too.”

  “You will have to go ask her yourself.”

  “You ask her?”

  “No.”

  “Then how you know that I wrong?”

  “How you know that you right?”

  * * *

  “You could ask the goat.”

  “Ask the goat what?”

  “If Mama pregnant.”

  “Goat would know?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then you ask him, then.”

  “How you mean?”

  “Don’t you and him is big friend? Having conversation and everything.”

  “When?”

  “Last night. Down at Stedman’s Corner. It wasn’t the goat you was talking to?”

  “So what if it was?”

  “Is a duppy.”

  “Sh-h-h.”

  “Quiet in there. School tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Poppa.”

  * * *

  “But you see him too, not so?”

  “I didn’t talk to him.”

  “But you see him.”

  “ ’Course.”

  “Why you think that is we see the goat?”

  “You mean — if is we it come to?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think is so?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe it come for us.”

  “Poppa!”

  “What going on in there? Don’t I tell —”

  “Jackso trying to frighten me.”

  “Jackson?”

  “Yes, Poppa.”

  “You frightening you sister?”

  “No, Poppa!”

  “He telling duppy story, Poppa.”

  “Jackson?”

  “Yes, Poppa.”

  “You telling you sister a duppy story?”

  “Not really, Poppa.”

  “Well, really stop that and really go to sleep. Both of you. Or I going to really come in there to you.”

  “Yes, Poppa.”

  “Yes, Poppa.”

  * * *

  “Jackso.”

  “What?”

  “Why you want Mama to be pregnant?”

  “How you mean?”

  “You don’t remember the last time?”

  “ .”

  “You remember?”

  “Yes. I remember clear as day.”

  “Me too.”

  “So why you want her to be pregnant?”

  “I remember the blood.”

  “Me too.”

  “And Poppa —”

  “Crying like a baby.”

  “And darkness, like it say in Genesis. Forty days and forty nights.”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  “So, Jackso.”

  “What?”

  “Why you want her to be pregnant again?”

  For the next few days, though they didn’t discuss it, the twins watched their mother closely. There was no more early-morning vomiting, and she was up and doing as usual when they came home in the afternoons. She didn’t complain about being dizzy or tired. Or gas. She seemed to sit down a lot, but that may have been her back, which gave her trouble from time to time.

  * * *

  On Wednesday morning when the twins reached Stedman’s Corner, Trucky was waiting for them, bouncing up and down.

  “What happen, Trucky?” asked Pollyread. Something was always happening with Trucky.

  “You don’t know what day it is?” he asked, excitement bubbling in his words.

  “Wednesday,” said Jackson impatiently. Trucky never came straight to the point.

  “You never see Miss Phillipson go down to Town yesterday morning and come back in the afternoon with a big envelope in her hand as she get out the car.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I never notice,” said Pollyread dismissively: She always had more important things to do than watch the comings and goings of others — though somehow, Jackson thought, she usually knew about them.

  “Me neither,” said Jackson, who had, in fact, been kicking ball with Trucky and some other boys yesterday afternoon on the piece of level ground in front of the school. He’d been aware of Miss Phillipson’s return from wherever she’d gone, but hadn’t taken any interest in what the principal had in her hand.

  “Well,” said Trucky, dancing beside them as they continued toward Marcus Garvey, “I notice her.”

  “You is a real newspaper, Trucky,” said Pollyread, in a hurry to hear the real news, whatever it was.

  Trucky beamed. “Well, when she leave, she only have her car key in her hand and her big hamper basket handbag over her shoulder.”

  “And when she come back?” prompted Pollyread, an avid reader of mysteries.

  “She leave the handbag in the car,” said Trucky, who relished the smallest details of everyday life.

  “So what was in the big envelope?” asked Jackson sharply.

  “Who say anything about any envelope?” Trucky stepped in front of them with mock astonishment on his face.

  “Nuh you,” said Jackson, irritated now. “You see what was inside the envelope?”

  “No,” said Trucky. “How I was to see?”

  “You mean she never come over and show you?” Pollyread’s tone was sarcastic enough for even Trucky to understand.

  “Is one of those big yellow envelopes from the Ministry,” he said, a little defensive as he stepped aside and they resumed walking toward school.

  “Cho,” said Jackson, not letting up. “She get those envelopes from the Ministry all the time.”

  “Maybe it have salary money in it,” said Pollyread casually.

  “It too thin to have salary money in it. Besides, is the middle of the month.”

  The twins knew that there wasn
’t anything else to do at this point but to wait until Trucky was good and ready to tell them what he knew, if he really knew anything.

  “Then,” Trucky exclaimed dramatically, “this morning …” He paused. Now he had their attention again. “Auntie Mavis CB her sister.”

  It was a point of pride for the Gordon family that they had a citizens band radio in their little house, one of only two or three in the whole district, which didn’t have telephone service and had no hope of getting it anytime soon. It had been installed over the protests of Trucky’s father, who preferred to go on with his life as much as possible at arm’s length from the rest of the world, particularly of Town. But Mrs. Gordon came from a large family scattered across the island, and happily accepted the gift of her baby brother, who had a small electronics and computer shop in Town. He had come up and installed it one weekday when he knew Trucky’s father would be down in Town. Mr. Gordon was not well pleased with his wife on his return, but had more sense than to throw the paraphernalia down into the gully behind the house, which was his first instinct. Now the crackles and screeches and rasping voices were part of the soundscape in that little corner of Top Valley. Trucky’s Auntie Mavis in Town, who had never visited Valley, nevertheless was known to dozens of his friends as the source of stories behind the stories on the radio, and some that were not on the radio.

  “Auntie Mavis CB her sister,” Trucky repeated, his tone and the reference to his mother in the third person a sure promise of soap opera melodrama.

  “Somebody dead?” asked Pollyread briskly. They were approaching the school gate by now; her attention was beginning to wander to the other children arriving with them.

  “Nobody don’t dead, at least not for us,” said Trucky. “That’s not why she call.”

  “So why?” asked Jackson, sighting Tafiri Smith, who was bringing marbles to trade with him today.

  “She CB to say,” announced Trucky, pausing for effect, rising on tiptoe, “that Common Entrance results coming out in the papers tomorrow. They will announce in school today!” He waved a hand at the world and ran off into another group of children, no doubt to replay his little drama of superior knowledge.

  “Just weekend gone …” Jackson started saying, and then heard his voice, as if it were somebody else’s, die away.

  The Common Entrance exam stood like the Gates of Heaven and Hell for eleven-year-olds and their families all over the island. The common part of it was that everyone took the same exam at the same time everywhere. After that, the entrance was what mattered: Heaven was admission to the secondary school you wanted, hell was that the school didn’t want you. As Miss Galbraith, the Sunday school teacher at AME, would say from time to time to summon backsliders to contrition: Many are called but few are chosen.