Red Jacket

by Mordecai, Pamela;

  When November and December come, it is well past dark when she is getting home. As she walk down Mansfield Avenue, it seem to Grace that the dance party craze is getting more widespread. Nowadays the speaker boxes live outside for they take up too much space in premises that want to jam in the biggest number of patrons. The huge black rectangles come like small residences. Grace figure that anyhow a hurricane blow down your house, you could easy move into one of them! Not that Miss Carmen’s house is in any danger of blowing down, for it is a sturdy concrete structure, with hurricane straps on the roof and plywood shutters for the windows, just in case. Because she has boarders, older folks especially, Miss Carmen say she cannot take any risk.

  Stewie, Edgar, and Conrad still write her faithfully, and Ma, Pa, and Gramps too. The Clarion publish two of Edgar’s poems, and he is proud as a setting hen. They even pay him a few dollars. She put the clippings of the poems on her wall.

  “Mind how you staying on the street till late at night,” Stewie caution.

  “Careful and don’t take any chances in that Queenstown city,” Edgar write.

  “Please, I beg you, take care of yourself, my Gracie!” Conrad is practising the intricacies of punctuation.

  25 March 1974

  Dearest daughter,

  I nearly missed your birthday this year. Granny Evadne took sick in the middle of this month, the fifteenth to be exact and we had to call an ambulance and take her to hospital. It was bronchitis and it gave us a big scare but she came around quick-quick and was back at home in two days. You pay more for hospital care here than for good gold, so it was just as well she was home so soon. I never left her side after that for bronchitis is a serious business in a person of her age. Luckily the nuns gave me leave from work with no problem. Your Grandma Daphne and Lucille who boards here were Trojans. Daphne came and stayed for the first three days after Grannie Vads came out of hospital. Lucille stayed with a friend so Daphne could have her bedroom, but she came to help every day. After that Daphne came on Sundays so I could get a break. I had to mind Granny Vads for three weeks but eventually she was well enough so I could go back to work. Looking after Granny Vads is frustrating, especially making her obey the doctor’s instructions. She keeps getting up and dusting and sweeping if I don’t look sharp.

  I said my usual prayers for you today, begging God to watch over and guide you. I truly wish I were there to celebrate with you, my daughter. Have a wonderful birthday! I have to hustle and finish writing this, for the letter cannot have a postmark later than month end. It’s cruel, but that’s the arrangement, and I keep my side. Granny Vads is calling me, so I really have to go. Have a happy year and study hard.

  Sending all my love,

  Your mother,

  Phyllis

  There are four other lodgers who live with Grace and Miss Carmen, for that is how Miss Carmen make her living. Two are sisters, old ladies with all their family gone abroad. Nobody connected to them is left in St. Chris, but they refuse to go to the United States, Canada, or England, where they have sons and daughters.

  “We can’t stand the coldness and furthermore we not able for anybody to treat us like we have no nose on our face.” So say Miss Isoline.

  “We live here as human being for too long. Better to be poor and somebody, than rich and no better than a stray dog.” So say Miss Glosmie.

  Miss Carmen do everything for Miss Isoline and Miss Glosmie: cook, clean, wash clothes, get medicine, write letters, take them to doctor, take them to church, see that every day they walk around the small yard in the back. Every month their children send money to take care of them. Miss Carmen manage their bank business too, pay their tithes at church, put a smalls in their savings accounts, make their contribution to Burial and Benevolent Societies.

  Grace help Miss Carmen with the old ladies. She iron their clothes, fetch things from the grocery and the pharmacy, make them tea and lemonade, walk with them around the yard, read to them sometimes. Pa and Ma pay something for her bed and board, but this assistance from Grace is part of the arrangement, and Grace don’t mind, for Miss Carmen is a perfect lady who, never mind Grace’s help is her due, always say, “please” and “thank you.”

  There is space for two other boarders, and in the time Grace been in Queenstown, two young lady students from America come and go. The two boarders who just arrive since September to take their place are connected to Miss Carmen distantly: Mr. Fillmore Buxton is Miss Carmen’s dead husband’s first cousin once removed. (Grace is not sure how that work, but she will ask Ma.) He look like he is maybe forty or so. Mr. Buxton’s wife, Ermina, look plenty older than him. She is on leave from her job as a schoolteacher to get her BA degree, and she is in her second year at the Adventist College in Queenstown. He is supposed to be looking for work. They don’t have no children.

  Grace don’t see Mrs. Buxton often, for in addition to her studying, she give extra lessons to make money. Mr. Buxton is not in the house very much either — Grace presume he is out hunting for a job — except on Sundays when Miss Carmen provide everyone with a dinner fit for a bishop, complete with special beverage and dessert. After Sunday dinner, the Buxtons are accustomed to visit Mrs. Buxton’s sister that live outside Queenstown in a settlement called Freedom Heights, almost an hour’s bus ride from Mansfield Avenue.

  So one Sunday afternoon when Miss Carmen is taking her once-a-week sleep after dinner, and the old ladies are taking their regular afternoon nap, Grace is surprised to hear somebody tap on her door at the time when she usually organize herself for school. That is when she iron her uniform, darn any tear in her middy blouse or her school tunic, clean her shoes, wash and oil her hair. Sometimes, like today, she finish her homework early so she read and maybe have a little lie-down.

  When she open the door, it is Mrs. Buxton.

  “Miss Grace, I am sorry to disturb you.”

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Buxton. Something wrong?”

  “I don’t really know. Mr. Buxton leave after dinner, say he was going to the corner to buy cigarettes, you know, from those fellows that sell on the road?”

  Grace nod.

  “I don’t see him since, and if we don’t get the next bus to go to my sister, it will be too late, and we can’t not go, for she count on us for certain little things …” She pause, like she not sure how to say exactly what she mean.

  Grace nod again, this time to say she understand what Mrs. Buxton is saying delicately. “Certain little things” could mean they take her money or foodstuffs or toiletries. “Certain little things” could also mean she is simple, or not entirely in her right mind, or handicapped in some other way and the once-a-week visit is the only time she get help to clean, cook, or do her hair.

  “The ladies downstairs are all asleep, so I am asking you to tell Mr. Buxton when he come back — for he will come looking for me when he don’t see me at the bus stop — that I have gone, and he will see me back here by bedtime.”

  “I’ll be certain to tell him, Mrs. Buxton.”

  “Thank you very much, Miss Grace.”

  Grace listen as Mrs. Buxton hurry down the stairs and go out. When she hear the door close, she turn back to her book. She is near the end, sucking the juice of the last pages like her favourite mango. After a while her eyes get heavy and close, and she is dreaming the dream of the big mama fish and the baby fish. Together they gently bruise the bright water, leaving behind fine veins of froth in a train of disappearing webs. As the water is turning dark and cold, something wake her — not a noise, more a peculiar sensation in the air, a feeling of stifling, like the room is different and not in a good way. She half open her eyelids to look through the window opposite her bed, but there is nothing unusual outside.

  She rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, swinging her legs to the ground, bending down to put on slippers, when she look towards the door and see a man just beyond the end of her bed. She half-think, “He must be come for the message!” In the self same minute, she is frozen with fright, for Mr.
Fillmore Buxton is standing between her and the door, stink of sweat and worse stink of liquor, his belt loose, and his hand on his pants front that is poked up in a pyramid. He is a big man, not tall but meaty, and there is no other way out of the room. Oh Jesus! Hard as she try, she can’t move hand nor foot. Can’t blink. Her mouth can’t open to scream.

  Fillmore Buxton is pulling the zip down so his trousers are sliding onto his hips, penis poking through the slit of the pants, stiff and swell up like a big cucumber. The falling-down trousers don’t hold him back. He take two steps forward, throw her down on the bed, drop himself on top of her. While one hand push down on her chest, the other one is working her skirt up round her waist and dragging down her panty. The stiff penis is ramming her, the insistence of it stifling her breath. She panic, fear in her belly, for if he shove that baseball bat into her parts, she know she will split wide open. Now, hard as ever, it is pushing into the hair between her legs, but it not getting through the thick tangle, and her bursting lungs grab a gulp of air when the thing settle briefly in the V between her legs. The oxygen turn her brain like a crank, and she recall the advice that Ma give her and Pansy since they small. “Pinch. Scratch. Poke. Bite hard, anywhere you can bite!”

  Grace can’t move knee or elbow or finger, for the thick, heavy man cover her slim body, pinning her to the bed, but one of his cheeks is now and then close by her mouth as he move up and down, trying to get inside her. When next it arrive, she open her mouth and bite, making sure top teeth meet bottom teeth, as Ma instruct. She hear a scream loud enough to jolt a duppy out his grave and the man grab one side of his face, roll off of her and sit up, eyes squeeze tight and face and mouth twist up.

  She spit out something soft and fleshy. Warm wetness in her mouth and blood on the side of his face, and she shove him off the bed, run through the door and down the stairs, holding the panty so it don’t drop. She can’t run like that, though, so at the door, she let it fall, step out of it, and gallop into the street. Barefoot and bawling, she run and run, dodging the oversize speaker boxes, up Mansfield Avenue, past the telephone exchange, past the butcher shop, past the pharmacy, round the corner by Kingdom Hall, up along Meinster Road, past the Anglican Church of St. Bride, not noticing the sharp stones and pieces of glass on the road that cut her foot-bottom. When she come to her senses, she is running to her friend Olive’s place. Olive is boarding too and always telling Grace how lucky Grace is to be staying with family.

  She bawl so loud and long when she reach Olive that she barely manage to relate what happen. She still sobbing and wiping her nose as she bathe, dress in her friend clothes, lie on the bed under a blanket though it is a hot evening. She gaze up at the ceiling, paying no mind to the queasiness in her stomach, the bad taste in her mouth, the battalion marching through her head in heavy boots, considering for the umpteenth time if it is worth it, all this grief to get a education. Don’t life in the way Ma, Pa, and Gramps have lived it, is just as good? But that is daydreaming, for sure. When Miss Tingle, the Latin teacher, start scrawling their weekly test on the blackboard, she always sing out, her back to the class, “Iacta alea est. The die is cast, my dears!”

  Grace know she can’t go home because too many people sacrifice too much for her to be at St. Chad’s. The day she and Pa climb on to the bus to Queenstown with her grip was the day the dice land on the table of her life.

  She save her lunch money and buy a small knife with a dread blade.

  7

  Grace Gets Ready

  25 March 1976

  Dearest daughter,

  Happy birthday! There’s a small group of us here who practice playing music together. Today we started off by playing a “Happy Birthday!” medley for you in blues, honky-tonk, calypso, and reggae style. It was great fun.

  I realize you must be finishing school this year. I hope it was a good experience. I’m hoping too that maybe you are planning to go to college in September for you are now sixteen, and I know you are bright as ninepence! It’s not likely you can go without a scholarship, but I’m sure you are smart and hard-working enough to win one. Last year on your birthday I started a bank account for you. I can’t save much, but I put something in every week. I will let you decide what to spend it on. I am still praying that one day I will see you for I want so much to be part of your life, not to say money will buy me a part after all these years, but I’ve learned to be practical. As your Granny Vads says, “Air pie and breeze patty can’t fill anybody belly.”

  By the way, it’s not only patty, cocoa bread, and hard-dough bread you can get here, but all kinds of Christophian food: avocado pear, plantain, yam, breadfruit, gungo peas, cocoa, and dasheen. They have our pumpkin too. It’s different from their pumpkin, though the two of them resemble. Their pumpkin can only make pie. It can’t make soup nor boil and eat like ours. So never mind all the things they have, we have a better pumpkin!

  I will sign off now for I have homework to do. I’m taking an accounting course. The nuns need a person to do accounts, for Mr. Lieberman, a Jewish gentleman who has done that job for a long time, is retiring to Florida at year’s end. He is training me and so I am trying to soak up the figures.

  God bless you, my daughter.

  Your loving mother,

  Phyllis

  Saturday. August nearly finish. Grace lucky enough to get a part-time job at the Teachers’ Credit Union near where Miss Carmen live in Queenstown, so she work through July and half of August and just reach back home to Wentley. The two weeks since just fly past, don’t even wave a good greeting!

  Dusk coming on and she outside on the rickety steps round the back of the barracks hut, book on her knee. That is where she and her friend Edris oftentimes sit reading and talking. Right now Edris is crying and crying for her Gran, who they bury ten days ago, who is the only mother that Edris ever know. Mrs. Bird was in hospital for a long time, and she get bedsores so bad they kill her.

  “Parson say is God’s will,” Edris say, tears dripping. “How that could be and Gran just turn fifty couple years back?”

  “Gracie, you reading in that darkness?” Gramps stick his head out the door.

  “No, sir.”

  “So what, then, Miss Granddaughter?”

  “Thinking about what parson tell Edris, Gramps. Don’t know how God could want anybody to die from bedsores.”

  “The God I know is not a fan of bedsores.”

  “Edris say nobody don’t contradict parson, for they are faithful believers. So you not faithful then, Gramps?”

  “Never confuse church and religion. One is people praising their God, the other is folks running a business — half the time, a monkey business.”

  He chuckle a gravelly chuckle, and Grace laugh a short laugh. Edris don’t laugh, only jump up and say, “Good night, Mr. Carpenter. See you, Gracie,” and leave quick-quick, for now, night coming down. Grace get up too and go inside out of the cool night air, but she don’t forget the questions of church and faithfulness.

  Sunday morning, and they sitting around, waiting for Ma and the younger ones. Gramps and Pa go to Methodist Chapel and the big children go with them today. That service is not so long as at Evangel Tabernacle where Ma worship and where this morning she take Princess and Sam. Stewie, Edgar, and Conrad gone to collect the man blossoms of the breadfruit tree for Ma to use and make a special sweet dessert. Meantime they brew coffee from Gramps beans that he grow, pick, dry, and roast himself, and also cocoa-tea for Ma, Grace, Sam, and Princess. No Pansy any more, for is more than a year since she gone her own way with Mortimer. Gramps is the coffee man. Pa is in charge of boiling the balls of country chocolate, flavouring the dark liquid with sticks of cinnamon. There is milk from the Williams cows next door, and brown sugar that Pa bring home, each crystal separate and clear like a tiny honey-yellow diamond.

  Today, breakfast is a celebration, for Grace not only pass her O level exams, she come first at St. Chad’s and first in all St. Chris. Mark you, she know already that she going to st
udy in foreign, for she take the tests to go to university in America, and she score so high that plenty universities offer her scholarships. It’s only a half happy time for her all the same. Edris just scrape through two subjects, and that is after her mother in New York spend plenty money on extra lessons. Edris was counting on good passes in English and Math to get into the school for practical nurses in St. Chris.

  “I well vex with God, Gramps. Seem like he arrange whole heap of bad things for Edris, and she don’t do him nothing. Is you same one warn me about religion, and I getting to see it as unreliable.”

  “Gracie, I try to show you the difference between religion as a business and worshipping God in spirit and in truth, like the Bible say. If you are dealing with God in spirit and in truth, sometime you and him going to fuss. Edris and her people mix up with a deity that give orders, count sins, and don’t brook argument. I assure you, is not me alone but many I have met who wrestle with their God.”

  “Don’t hear nobody in this house wrestling with God.”

  “Well, is not polite to fight in public,” Gramps retort. “The Lord say you are to retire to your quarters.”

  Grace smile, sort of. “What I must do about church in foreign, Gramps?”

  “I don’t say you must join a church, but you should find folks to pray with. Look for a community where you feel at home and not envied when you achieve, where all rejoice at your successes as you rejoice at theirs. And when you pray, let it not be with a caveat that none come off better than you.”

  Grace feel guilty. She don’t need to have more things than other people, but she like to come first in class, get the highest marks. She wonder if she should confess this to Gramps, for it sound as if he is saying it’s a bad thing.

  “While we are on that matter, I also wish you to promise me that when you are famous, you will make things possible for others — especially those of your own race.” That let her off the hook. She can only be famous if she do better than everybody else.