Red Jacket

by Mordecai, Pamela;

  Malachi and Evadne’s holding is a fairly large one, as far as the property of slaves’ descendants goes. With each succeeding generation, it has been broken up, and yet fifteen acres or so still stretch away from them through clumps of mahoe and cedar trees, with groves of breadfruit and a huddle of otaheite apple trees near what they call “the river.” It is just a large stream, but it never runs dry, not even in the worst drought. There is a pool there, where Gramps failed hilariously in repeated attempts to teach Elsie and Evadne to swim. Ralston’s portion, marked off by the new fence, more or less splits the place.

  “So it reach to the river all the way across?” Ralston is trying to sound detached, although Gramps can see he is impressed by the size of his acquisition.

  “The bottom boundary of your grandmother’s place is past the house, down in the gully by the primary school.” Gramps waves towards an untidy kraal of small buildings in a depression further down the road. Ralston uses both hands to shade his eyes against the afternoon sun, a yellow glare in the sky. “Your land, which starts at the fence, goes up so.” Gramps arm sweeps the other way, towards the mountains.

  “So where it stop on that side?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I don’t think even your grandpa rightly knew. It get into some thick bush as it start to climb and the gradient steep like a rock-face, so nobody know where private land stop and government land start.”

  “So how I would know the bounds of my land?”

  “You could ask a surveyor to come and measure.”

  Ralston takes a step forward. He folds one arm across his chest and strokes his chin with the other, as he swivels his head from side to side pondering the extent of his acreage. Gramps stands behind him, looking down at Evadne’s small property. Seconds later Ralston is in a heap at the bottom of the cliff.

  34

  Open Secrets

  “Zeke, you never ... ?” Evadne contemplates Ralston in his coffin.

  “How could you ask me that?”

  The irony doesn’t fail to strike Ezekiel. It was Evadne’s question when he asked if Phyllis should perhaps have an abortion.

  He isn’t sure himself what transpired on the hillside, so he concentrates on his conviction that it is for the best. His report to the district constable states that the young man leaned over too far and fell. There are lots of people to witness to the fact that Ralston was drinking that day and enough who will think “good riddance,” for Ralston has not endeared himself to the small world of Hector’s Castle.

  After the funeral, Gramps promises to pass by Archdeacon and Mrs. Miller to tell Phyllis the news. There is no point in not telling her. Information in small places is, like the wispy flowers of the silk cotton tree, lifted by air and dispersed on its numerous currents. Never mind no mouths admitted to telling tales, accounts find their way across yards, then miles. It is magic.

  This does not mean secrets cannot be kept. If people are determined enough, they can band together to fervently guard history. Gramps met an American negro in the war who swore he was descended from Thomas Jefferson. He carried Jefferson’s face, his body shape, and his name.

  When Gramps asked if people knew, he replied, laughing, “Plenty enough. But still, we be good at hiding what we choose.”

  35

  Two Letters from New York City

  114 Riverside Drive, Apt 2G

  New York, NY 10024, USA

  12 June 1960

  Dear Zeke,

  We don’t long since get here, just a week now. I am so sorry for leaving with no goodbye. This is so you don’t hear on the street that I am gone. I could not forgive myself for that. Part of the reason why we leave so quick is that the papers come through sudden. God is good, for I was at my wits end worrying about Phyllis in the home at Alton Mount. As it turn out, I went to collect her just days after Gwen and Moses came for the baby.

  After what happened, keeping on in Hector’s Castle was impossible, never mind it has been my home for all my life. It reached the stage where I could not even think of the good times, the precious moments with yourself and Elsie, me and Malachi, the child I bore and raised there. I beg God to help me so I don’t curse and condemn that grandson of mine, but rather find it in my heart to forgive and pray for him, so his soul don’t fry in Hell. I am not sure I am able but I try, for that is Jesus’s instruction and he has given me no leave to ignore it. I think if men could understand how with one sex act they can destroy a whole world, make people want to forget their whole life and every good thing that ever happened to them, they would take pity and satisfy their lust without benefit of partner. God forgive me, but if a man spill his own seed to spare the kind of evil that we are going through, I don’t see how God will hold it against him.

  Daphne’s apartment is in Manhattan. The first woman she was companion to when she came up gave her a room to stop in and when the woman moved to Florida two years ago, she let the place to Daphne at a reasonable rent for she didn’t want to trouble with new tenants. And we have a church. Daphne goes only a few times a year, but a more devout church sister introduced me to the pastor, a Rev. Morris who looks like he could be coloured. It is a mixed congregation, half us and half them. The services are what I am accustomed to although I find the singing half-hearted.

  When we came Daphne took time off work to show us around so we know our way and understand how to take the bus downtown. I tell her I am not going into any subway. Underground is for worms and moles, not human beings except they are dead. The one time she took me down there will serve for the rest of my life.

  Phyllis is settling in very slowly. She is still grieving for that baby. I find it nothing short of a miracle that she could love it any at all, though it was a pretty child with good colour and soft hair. Daphne has got her into a school for young mothers, run by nuns. She is one of just two girls who do not have their baby with them, which must cause her more pain.

  I will write more soon, but I never wanted time to pass before I let you know how we were doing. I pray God’s blessings on you for all your help, and Gwen and Moses who have opened their heart and home to a child that is no relation. I hope she has settled in well. My good wishes to the family.

  Your friend always,

  Evadne

  12 June 1960

  Dear Mr. Carpenter, sir,

  I reech to this big city safe, so I writing to let you know. With how Granny Evadne feel about Hector Castle and everyting with me it dont make no sense for we to stay in that house. Everyting happen so fast I reelly dont get no time to say a good thank you so all I can do Mr. Carpenter is to say a big THANK YOU now I mean it with all my heart I hope is not a bad ting but I miss that likl baby for true an I will pray far it every day as God send life and also for you sir for kindnes to me. Granny Vads say that she long to have a lettre from you and I am hopin you give my likl dawter the lettre I rite on July 18. Remember pleas sir you promise to see she get her birtday letter that I will rite evri year.

  Yours fatefuly,

  Phyllis Patterson

  MARK

  36

  Mirando y Dejando

  He calls Mona every night when he’s away, but he isn’t looking forward to tonight’s call. He’s exhausted. They all are, though council wound up early, at about five, so they could make it to their hotels before the six o’clock curfew. The meeting had not been able to address any of the agenda items, some of which were urgent. He’s especially worried that they hadn’t got to the report from the Standing Committee on Information Systems Management. It addressed Y2K-related plans, and there was no postponing that to a subsequent council meeting, not with 1999 less than two months away. Tomorrow they’d have to get past the security and other issues relating to graduation and consider those items. But sufficient unto the day. He strips, throwing clothes on the bed, and stepping cautiously into the shower. He’s fallen at home more than once, and his doctor suggested some of the slips might have been episodes of cataplexy.

  He worries ab
out Mona. Not that she can’t manage by herself, being an independent and capable woman. She’d come to the United States to go to Georgetown University when she was only seventeen, and although she’d intended to, had never returned to Trinidad to live. After her first degree, she’d done an MA, then a PhD.

  He’d met her at the university in St. Chris when she was doing research for her dissertation, although, unlike Grace, she hadn’t joined the faculty. She’d been sitting on the side of the senior common room pool, thick black hair a waterfall over her shoulders, toes playing in the water. She had unusually well shaped legs for a coolie woman and a nicely filled-out bottom. He liked East Indian women, but for their skinny legs and skimpy backsides. The tar brush must have slipped in somehow to round this one out.

  “How’re things, Manny?”

  “Observing and going my way, sir.” The bartender in the senior common room made his usual rejoinder as Mark slid onto his accustomed barstool, massaging his forehead as he issued the order for his daily ration.

  “What’s this ‘observing and going my way’ you always on about?”

  “Funny, you know, sir. You the first person ask me. Make me think that maybe if I say a obscene word to these good folks when them ask me how me doing, them wouldn’t even hear it.”

  “Don’t do that, my friend. They’ll hear anything that could be considered even vaguely offensive.”

  “Don’t do it up to now, sir, but many times tempted.”

  “But you still don’t tell me what it mean!”

  “Something my great-granny used to say, sir. She come from Cuba. Name me herself, Manuel. And she would say, if you ask her how things going, ‘Mirando y dejando.’ It mean you watching how things going and proceeding on your ways, minding your own business.”

  From ten in the morning when it opened, until seven at night when he signed off, Manny was at his post behind the bar, ready with towel and good nature.

  “Right, then. Cheers!” Mark hoisted his Red Stripe.

  He liked Manny. He liked the bar. That day, the beer was a reward for teaching steadily since nine o’clock. He’d been pinch-hitting for a colleague.

  Refreshed and pleased at learning about observing and moving along from Manny, he was en route to his office when Mona asked him the time as he walked by. She was still poolside. He’d obliged, then pointed to her watch.

  “Oh!” She’d laughed, embarrassed. “It doesn’t work.”

  He’d nodded, still smiling, and said goodbye, pretending to leave but circling back to the bar to ask Manny who she was.

  “Seem you omit important info from the update, Manny.” Mark rolled his eyes in Mona’s direction.

  “Is you omit to ask me, Prof. She name Mona Mansingh. Writing doctor thesis, something about patois. I not too clear. She live over by Stokely.”

  “Bright as well as beautiful, then?”

  “Guess so, Prof, if doctor thesis mean you bright.”

  “Point well taken, Manny.”

  “I could tell you one thing though, Prof. You got to be careful with these coolie ladies. I a coolie man myself, on two side, mother full and father half, so I could tell you. They very high strung, sensitive, like them thoroughbred breed of horse. Need careful handling.”

  “Thanks for the advice, Manny, but for now I am just observing and going along, as you say.” Landing Manny a good-natured punch, he set off again.

  His relationship with Mona had seemed fated. In uncanny ways, it had unfolded in tandem with his prospects at the Caribbean-Inter-American Development Bank. The next time he’d seen her (it was at the pool again), he’d asked her to have a drink with him.

  “I really shouldn’t,” she’d replied.

  “Why not? Is there someone who would object?”

  “My mother mightn’t like the idea.”

  “You never do things that your mother disapproves of?”

  “That’s a pretty personal question from someone I don’t know!” She was on her feet by then, pool bag in hand.

  “You’re leaving because I asked you to have a drink?”

  “I’m going to change.”

  “I’ll be here when you come back.”

  He’d stayed, she’d come back, and the drink became lunch, during which he’d enjoyed being the centre of attention for he was with by far the best-looking female there. When he’d returned to his office, there’d been a letter saying he was short-listed for the bank job. The day after their first real date, he received a phone call inviting him to DC for an interview: he was one of the final three candidates. He’d wooed her as he waited for the verdict, and once certain of the job, pressed his suit home.

  “So, who do I ask for your hand?”

  “Whom, not who,” she instructed. They’d been walking from his office towards the sub-warden’s flat where she stayed.

  “Sorry. Whom do I ask for your hand?”

  “It’s mine so I’m not sure why you’d ask anyone else.”

  “Well, I know your Dad is dead, but there’s your Mum in Trinidad, and that bro, the one with the vile temper somewhere in Canada, not to mention sister Nora in Maryland, all of whom I’d prefer not to get on the wrong side of.”

  “And there’s you ending a sentence with a preposition and, far more important, not being very romantic about asking me to tie my future to yours.”

  He’s deeply fond of her and glows with pride when he considers that she’s his. He thought he’d never be bored for her mind was quick and her interests broad. Superbly qualified as wife and mother, it grieves him how it went awry.

  “Bad luck worse than Obeah,” he speaks into the mists of the shower. He’d call after the ten o’clock news and pilot their conversation carefully. She probably hasn’t yet heard about Edwin Langdon’s murder.

  GRACE AND JIMMY

  37

  Grace Arrives in Mabuli

  “Are you alright, Dr. Carpenter?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “For sure, a bit weary?”

  “A bit weary, yes.”

  The priest is silent again, studying the way ahead. A waning moon offers glimpses of a humpty-bumpty worm of road showing its dusty back in the headlights now and then as it wriggles its way through scrubby blackness.

  The only flight from Geneva to the airport near Benke is on Thursdays and she wants to be in Mabuli early in the week. She leaves Geneva on Monday, but by the time she emerges from the airport in Ouagadougou, it is past one o’clock on Tuesday morning. Usually they meet her on the tarmac and escort her through officialdom, not that she regards it as de rigeur, but after twelve hours flying during which she’s been serenaded by snores and suffocated by exhalations of foul air, any intervention that spares her extra minutes on her feet is welcome.

  Once on the ground, she looks for the priest, but with no luck. Her laissez-passer takes her through immigration and customs, and when one of a tangle of lean, eager young men offers to put her bags onto a cart, she lets him heft the heavy cases. He oughtn’t to be helping her at all, given a sign that warns that only porteurs are authorized to handle baggage, but there are none that she can see. Like countless touts inside the continent’s airports, he is operating under the radar. As she sets off with the laden cart, she palms him his tip with a conspiratorial smile. When he looks at the money, his smile widens and he bows to signal the extent of his gratitude. It is a bigger-than-usual tip, in the spirit of Christmas just past. She hopes it will help launch him into prosperity in 1994. The new year is barely four days old.

  Strong-arming the cart, each wheel with its own mind, she emerges onto the pavement to inhale a dusty mouthful of cool air. She manages to arrest the trolley, and is looking about for the priest when a tiny old woman heaves into view, also fighting a cart. It towers with boxes and bags and is crowned by an oversize suitcase. As the cart, overloaded and tipsy, wobbles across the pitted pavement in front of Grace, it hits a rut and the case on top flies backwards towards its driver. Grace lunges at the large missile a
nd catches it, yanking her body around as it carries her to the ground with its weight. She straightens up, a sharp pain shooting across the bottom of her belly. The woman, though startled, has managed to halt her cart and is limping toward Grace.

  “I am so sorry, vraiment désolée. You are okay, mademoiselle? Merci. Merci beaucoup. The barrow, it is stubborn.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” Grace lies. In truth, the pain in her lower abdomen, though not quite as severe, still lingers. The suitcase might have seriously injured the diminutive person in front of her, however, and she is glad she caught it. “Are you all right? I think we need …”

  As she looks around for help, a man steps up, lifts the suitcase onto the woman’s cart, and turns to scan the lines of youth squatting in front of the exit, warming themselves at small lanterns. The outside hustler crew, they hawk local transportation, food, “necesites” like toothpaste, soap, combs, deodorant, and also “hebergument aculliant” translated with equivalent aplomb and equally poor spelling as “horspitable accomodashun.” Four young men leap forward. The man chooses one, dismisses the others with a few words at which they laugh, and speaks to the fellow he’s chosen. A bill passes hands, and the old woman’s errant cart moves off as she smiles, bobbing her head up and down to show her thanks.

  “Dr. Carpenter?”

  “Father Atule?”

  They shake hands. The priest is somewhere in his forties, tall and very dark. He takes charge of her trolley, guides her towards an old Land Rover, holds the door open so she can get in, loads the bags, and relinquishes the cart to eager palms.