Red Jacket

by Mordecai, Pamela;

  At the start, Grace can just barely hear the two of them talking. After a time, she hear nothing. Grace stand up, waiting and waiting. She can’t picture what it could be that is taking Pansy so long to tell Mortimer, and in her belly-bottom she feel something bad is going to happen. Also she vex that Pansy abandon her, for even if the two of them always fuss, she depend on her big sister. She is thinking maybe she should take out a book and read, for it don’t make no sense to just lean against the shop front, doing nothing, and she start to search in her bag, when she hear Pansy shout, “Lord Jesus! Oh God, help me!”

  Pansy bawling for help louder and louder, so Grace get frighten. She drop her schoolbag, run quick into the shop, and push on the door to the back room with all her might. After a couple tries, it fly open. Staring at her are one pair of feet with brown socks, one pair of feet with no socks, four legs with no covering and Mortimer’s bare bottom rising and falling with a motion that remind her of when he was using the saw.

  Grace look, turn right around, march out, pick up her school bag, and start walking home. First she is furious with Pansy, but then she start to laugh. Mortimer have a nice body, but he is short. Pansy is a good-sized girl. Grace remember Gramps say, “Tiny insects pollinate sizeable flowers, Gracie. It’s God’s way.” She not sure this pollination of Pansy’s sizeable flower is God’s way, but she find it funny all the same.

  “So … So you going to tell Ma?” Pansy is panting hard when she catch up with Grace and grab on to her. “You going tell Ma. Right, Miss Goody-Goody?”

  Grace stop and study Pansy top to bottom, say nothing, turn, and keep going.

  “I ask you a question,” Pansy say, rough and gruff, holding on to her again.

  “Somebody have to tell Ma,” Grace say. “Better is you.”

  “Make you couldn’t just wait outside like I tell you?”

  “If is that you was going there to do, why you never just send me home?”

  “Is not that I was going there to do.”

  “So what happen? Is force Mortimer force you?”

  “After nobody can force me to do what I don’t want to do.”

  “So you must be force him.” Pansy make no response to that.

  “So you going tell Ma?” Pansy ask again.

  “No need to tell,” Grace say. “Your clothes mess up, you smell raw, and you look strange.”

  “I look bad for true?” Pansy sound worried now.

  “Couldn’t look worse.”

  “Well, you go in by the front door and talk to Ma, that is, if she reach home already. Make sure to take up plenty time. Meantime I will go in through the back and make haste and change.”

  “Pansy, I not helping you hide it from Ma. You is my big sister…”

  “Sister?” Pansy give out. “You is most definitely not my sister. After no sister of mine could look like you!”

  5

  Professor Carpenter

  Grace is learning about the reproductive system. She is in General Entrance class, and it seem to her that she is learning like a machine. She can use a potato to make prints. She can use a piece of twine and find out the length of a river or road on a map, never mind how many wiggles they make. She know what things a seed need to grow. She know which food is good to eat and which not so good. She can say her tables up to fifteen times. And she start some algebra and geometry, sake of Gramps. She see him use them sometimes, and he explain them so easy, she take to them like a calf to the udders of the mama cow.

  “The alphabet letter is like a question sign then, Gramps!” she declare in great excitement when he show her that in the equation a + 7 = 12, a equals 5.

  “Ah, my granddaughter,” Gramps make a fist and rap her softly in the head. “You are such a clever ten-year-old. They cut your navel string on smarts!”

  “I know about that too, Gramps. The navel string has a name. Umbilicus.” She pronounce the u like a o. “Is how a baby breathe and feed from its mother.”

  “That’s very good, Gracie. But you must say uhm-bilicus, not ohm-bilicus. Like hum, but without the aspirate.”

  Gramps talk like that all the time. She long ago know what a aspirate is.

  “Uhm-bilicus,” Grace intone.

  “Egg-zactly.”

  “Chicken-zactly!”

  “Hen-zactly.”

  “And the rooster comes along and then there’s lots more…”

  “Egg-zactlies!”

  Two of them collapse into cackles of laughter. Is a joke they make up together.

  Grace consider whether she could talk to Gramps about what is bothering her. Most of what she learn in class about the reproductive system is things everybody know long time. They learn in Genesis God say man must multiply and fill the earth, and from they small, Ma and Pa tell them how a man and woman come together to make babies and that this is a good thing, and nice too.

  But there is something new. Teacher tell them about genes and say that is how children “get things” from their parents. She need to find out about her genes so she can know where her red skin and freckles and strange red hair and puss eyes come from, or if is true what Stewie hear the headmistress say that day at the standpipe at school, or what Mrs. Sommersby say in Mr. Wong shop, that she is “a jacket,” unsanctified fruit of a union between Pa and some red woman. And she need to know what else people get from their mother and father, if there is a gene for learning your times tables, a jokify gene, or a gene for being own-way like Pansy.

  25 March 1971

  My dearest daughter,

  Well, by the time you get this you will already be eleven, and on the way into your twelfth year. In lots of ways, this is the last year for you to be a little girl, so I hope you make the most of it. Do all the things you really like this year. Play music with your friends using a comb and tissue paper, and a grater from the kitchen and an old pot for a drum and shakas off the poinciana tree. Play Hide and Seek, Hopscotch, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, Brown Girl in the Ring, and Blue Bird, Blue Bird In and Out the Window. Play all the skipping games: One, Two, Three, Auntie Lulu and Salt, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper; also Bandy Leg Lily and my favorite, Room for Rent.

  I don’t know if you have got your period yet. I’m sorry I’m not there to make sure you aren’t upset when that happens. It’s inconvenient but nothing to be scared of. And this is what makes it possible for you to have babies and you will want to do that in time.

  I don’t know what you will do to celebrate, but I hope you have a wonderful birthday. Maybe you will go to the Hale bird sanctuary in St. Charles and watch all kinds of birds come to eat and drink. Or maybe you will visit the big cotton tree near Perton with the door in its trunk and the little room inside for the duppies. Up here, everyone goes to a movie and then to McDonalds to eat junk food!

  Some good things have happened this past year, thank God, but unfortunately a lot of bad things as well. I remain glad that you are there in St. Chris, though I would love above everything else to have you with me. I pray that you are happy and doing well in school and helping at home, now you are growing up.

  I love you so very much. God bless you until next year.

  Your mother,

  Phyllis

  Grace win a scholarship in the General Entrance Examination and the whole of Wentley Park Primary into jubilation. Not that it is the first scholarship anybody from that school win, for headmistress is well proud of the results the school get, year after year. But what Grace Carpenter do has never been done before, and headmistress admit she don’t expect it to happen again. She get the second highest score on the test in the whole of St. Chris, and furthermore she score highest of all the girls that year. It sweet headmistress so much she give the school a holiday.

  It don’t usually happen this way, for headmistress normally get the results before the news reach the world through The Clarion. On the day of Grace triumph, however, the newspaper with the pass list arrive at Mr. Wong shop at the exact same time as the postmaster in Wentley hand hea
dmistress the envelope with the results. So the news bruck out everywhere same time, and Gramps is wriggling round on his dancing feet when Grace reach home.

  “Good afternoon,” he greet her. “May I carry your briefcase, Professor?” He twirl his hand in circles before him and then hold it in at his waist, bending forward in a deep bow. Then he stand up and salute. “I hear glad tidings, Prof. I hear you have secured a post that will take you to the big city and away from this humble village. We shall be sad to see you go, but we are elated at the good news.”

  As she give him her schoolbag, Grace trying to hold in her smile so it is not too big across her face. She know Gramps is talking in that way to cheer her up, for over the waiting time, they more than once have a “Suppose I get a scholarship” conversation. She confess to him that she want to go to secondary school, but she don’t want to leave home. There is no alternative, though, because the high schools near Wentley Park are too far for her to travel to each day, and Ma and Pa can’t afford the bus fare anyhow. In Queenstown she can stay with Pa’s cousin, Miss Carmen, who live close enough to the school so she can walk. And besides, if she get through to her first choice school, St. Chad’s, it is a much better school than any of those nearby. So Queenstown it will have to be.

  Now the news is here, Grace is happy but also confuse as well as frighten. She not surprise she win a scholarship, for she never think the exam was hard. In fact she not surprise she win a place at St. Chad’s. But she wasn’t expecting to come so high, and now she don’t know how to feel or what to say. So she is scared about plenty things, starting from how to fix her face when she is getting all the praise, and going along to how she will manage all alone in a strange city.

  She and Gramps walk up the path between the blooms of cosmos that are yellow, purple, and orange and grow thick and full, even in the dry time, for they drink up Ma’s soapy washing water and keep coming back year after year.

  “The Professor is pensive,” Gramps say. “Has she had a difficult day?”

  Grace look up at Gramps and nod, and the smile that was going to break out is overtaken by fat tears that fill her eyes and run down her face, jumping from her chin onto the starched bodice of her uniform.

  “I think you’ve had too much excitement, Miss Gracie. I made some Seville orange drink and there is bully beef and crackers left over from lunch. How would you like some vittles to celebrate?” Gramps don’t comment on the tears. They go inside, and he set out lunch while Grace take off her uniform and change into her day clothes. Then they sit at the table.

  “Lord, we give you thanks,” Gramps is praying, “for this food. Bless it unto our bodies and our bodies to your service. We thank you especially for the great success that Gracie has had news of today. Please help her to be joyful and not afraid, knowing your grace will be sufficient for her. Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  “Now eat up, Prof. Ma sends congratulations and Mrs. Sampson, too. Ma say she leaving early.”

  “Pa coming early too, Gramps?”

  “He will come as soon as he can. But you know he is not his own master.”

  Grace don’t understand that, for after all, slavery done long time.

  6

  Queenstown

  Pa’s first cousin, Miss Carmen, is older than him, well past sixty, while Pa is forty-nine on his next birthday. She is the straightest, tallest woman Gracie ever see. Her hair is all white, and she wear it in a long plait coil on top of her head like a crown. She wear clothes make out of African cloth in bright colours, blue and purple, green and red. Even when the colours wash out, the patterns are still striking. The large, loose tops go with long skirts and sometimes trousers.

  “Miss Carmen,” Grace ask one day, “how come you wear those clothes?”

  Miss Carmen look down on herself, “These? Why? You like them, Grace?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I never see people wear day clothes that look like that.”

  So Miss Carmen tell Grace how she is a long-time member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, how she meet the great Marcus Garvey as a little girl and how she go with her mother to the plays and parades in Jamaica that he organize. Miss Carmen born in St. Chris, but she go to Jamaica as a child, and grow up there, returning to St. Chris as a young woman. Gramps long time tell Grace about Marcus Garvey, but Gramps was not so lucky as to meet Mr. Garvey.

  “I love these clothes,” Miss Carmen say at the end of her story. “They are very comfortable, and they make me feel queenly.” She smile. “But,” she go on, “I also wear them so people will take notice. I want folks to learn about our heritage, about where our ancestors came from, and I want them to understand the struggles we’ve faced.”

  Miss Carmen always talking about heritage: mostly African heritage, but also English heritage, which some Christophians have in their blood, but all have in their head. The English run St. Chris from they capture it in the seventeenth century till the island get Independence nine years ago. “Well expressed in our children’s rhyme,” Miss Carmen say, “We talk English/we walk English/we run English/can’t done English!” Now she is also studying her Asian heritage for she just discover her mother’s grandpa was a indentured labourer, come from India to work in the cane fields of St. Chris.

  Grace think a lot about that word, “heritage.” She wonder if a person’s heritage could get into their blood. And Miss Carmen is not even as black as Pa or Gramps or Ma. She is brown, though her hair is kinky. Maybe one day she can talk to Miss Carmen about where her red skin and puss eyes come from.

  25 March 1972

  Dearest daughter,

  Well, congratulations my teenager! You are now beginning your thirteenth year! The next thing I’ll hear is you are a big married lady! I know you are growing up into a fine person and I pray that you are happy. Today I’m asking God to give you three gifts. I’m asking him to make you glad to be the person you are. I’m also praying you will always be assured that many people love you: God loves you, everybody in the Carpenter family loves you, Granny Vads and Granny Daphne love you, and I love you. Thirdly, I pray you find the reason for your life. The priest at Mass this morning said that there are two important days of your life, the day you were born and the day you know why.

  For myself, I pray one day I’ll get to see you and tell you how much I love you. I think you were the reason why I was born, and I long to see My Reason!

  I am sorry I have not been so good at the news in my last letters. It’s always the same thing over and over, and most of it is bad. The one good thing is that black people seem to be making some progress in getting their rights at last. I don’t want to talk too soon, but we are all hoping and praying.

  I’m sorry to leave you, but I have to hurry, as I want to post this on my way to work. God bless you, my daughter.

  Your mother,

  Phyllis

  Grace is walking home from school, looking at the people around her and thinking that some of these town people look so mix up, she can’t pick out any one heritage. She is thinking that life in Queenstown is very mix up too. For one thing, day and night collide, with people always on the street, cursing, laughing, shouting, dancing to sound system music. It so noisy Grace have to sleep with a pillow over her head and descend into a deep underground of sleep from which she wake drugged and headachy, instead of refreshed like in Wentley Park.

  Mansfield Avenue is one long stretch of bar and dance hall. There is never room enough, so people dance in covered yards on dry hard-packed earth or on cement that they pour over dirt, so it break up and they have to patch it over and over. The bumpy floors of poor people ballrooms don’t stop them, though. As night descend, people start dancing and sometimes, even in the days.

  Grace never tired to see the plenty different signs inviting people to come inside and dance. She copy them down and send them to Stewie and Edgar because they are so hilarious. In one part of the avenue, the signs always rhyme. “Cosmo as President Taft, Carl as Chaka Zulu, and Fenton as Joh
n Shaft invites you to celebrate The Year of the Water Rat at Steve’s Hideaway. A Nite of Passion in the Latest Fashion. Come Even If Your Bones Squeak. We Got the Tonic to Make You Feel Sonic.” And “Lord Niney Moon and Lord Tenny Sun with Don the Juan and Sancho the Pancho Call One and All to the Original Mansfield Dance Hall for a Night of Dance Till You Drop at Hal’s Honeypot House. Pay the Cover and Be a Lover.”

  Stewie and Edgar invent their own notices and send back. She hope neither Gramps nor Ma nor Pa see the dance party advertisements they are making up. As far as she is concerned, plenty teenagers in Wentley are parents already, and her brothers’ rudeness is funny more than disgusting.

  Stewie’s English teacher say the class must write poems and send to the St. Chris newspapers. The idea of writing a poem is a big joke to Stewart, but he tell Edgar, who been writing songs and stories and poems since long time ago. So Edgar start to send poems to the paper. He make sure to enclose copies of them in his letters to Grace. No poems don’t appear yet, but he is persevering.

  Grace is truly glad for the letters from Ma, Pa, Gramps, and her brothers. Even Conrad, who not any fan of putting pen to paper, send a short note now and then. Ma also send a parcel every so often by someone coming in from Wentley: St. Chris spice cake or Ma special potato pudding as well as pocket money and toiletries that Grace figure are courtesy of Mr. Wong. She will go home when Christmas come. Till then she must live with the noise and confusion of Queenstown and make what she can of her school of first choice and newfound place of torture, the great St. Chad’s.

  It is such a struggle to focus her mind in the musical commotion taking place on Miss Carmen’s street every night that after she board there one month, Grace start staying late at school so she can do some of her homework in the library. By the time she reach third form, Grace is staying at school every day to do homework. Now, in fourth form, she is starting the University of Cambridge’s O Level Exam Syllabus and most days it take over four hours to finish her homework.