“Sherry is fine, thanks. It’s six o’clock somewhere.”
“Mark always says that. I tell him it’s six o’clock in two places, actually.”
Grace is sitting directly in his line of vision as he enters the room. She has on an embroidered and beaded white m’bubu against which her skin flares. Her reddish hair, with more gray strands than he remembers, is twisted into a chessboard of small bumps with cowrie beads threaded through them. He studies her face, the slope of the gown on her shoulders, the peaks of her breasts.
“Hi, Mark. I’m pouring Dr. Carpenter a glass of sherry. Will you join us?”
What to do now? Kiss Grace? Shake hands? Do nothing?
“Allow me,” he says. He takes the glass of sherry from Mona, picks up a small side table, and walks it over to Grace, who is biting her lip, worrying what looks like a large blister on her hand. Pleased at resolving the problem, he sets the glass on the table. Neither kiss nor handshake needed!
“Grace, how nice to see you after so long, and in such magnificent circumstances.” He is being a bit over the top, but never mind; the idea is to keep going. He doesn’t look at Grace long, though he hopes he has done so warmly, then he is swiftly back at the bar, taking the glass of sherry Mona offers — she already has hers — and raising it.
“I think a toast is in order. Congratulations! You honour us by being the first person from St. Chris to receive the university’s Distinguished International Service Award. May your work prosper so that the health of our region and the world may prosper!” More overkill, but he is going to roll along like an army tank.
They lift their glasses. Sip. Mona speaks. “How’s Jeremiah, Dr. Carpenter?”
“Please call me Grace. He’s very well, thank you.”
“Is he here?” Mona goes on. “Has he come with his grandma?”
“No, not this time. We thought it would be hard for him to make two long journeys in so short a time.”
“Who’s Jeremiah, if I may ask?” Mark inquires, pleased that things are going well between the two women.
“Jeremiah is my son,” Grace says, eyes meeting his.
“Oh, really! I didn’t know you were married.”
“I’m not.”
“Foolish of me. Of course you needn’t be. But I certainly didn’t know that you had a son. Wonderful. Congratulations on that too. How old is he?” It flies straight into his head. Their bodies had rolled over each other for three hours one morning, with no prior or subsequent contact. But any number of other men might have done exactly that, days before or after. The child needn’t be his.
“He was four on the twenty-ninth of July.” With math and the calendar he is quick, has to be for the sake of his work. With the cycles that women’s bodies ride, he is familiar. It is a way of being doubly cautious. It was almost exactly nine months. Jesus, Grace, what fine fellow followed me? Then again, you were probably already pregnant. Maybe you don’t even know whose child it is!
He finds himself gazing at her tummy, a delightful African tummy, a motherly prominence, like the dome of a miniscule hut or a tiny mosque. In a second he is back in Cambridge, regarding tummy, breasts, legs, all of her stark naked, stretched out under him. He loses his grip and spills the sherry. Mona catches the glass in time, but her sari collects the escaping drops, which mark the red silk.
Grace stands, comes quickly towards Mona. “Oh, no! Do you have salt? Seltzer water?”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll be out of it and into another in two seconds. Do keep Mark company. I’ll be right back.” She vanishes down the corridor leading from the sitting room to the bedroom.
Grace goes back to her chair, collects her glass, comes over to the bar, and sets it down. “Thanks very much for the drink and good wishes. I should go. I’ll see you both in the dining room at twelve.”
She turns towards the door. He is about to say goodbye, when to his horror, he hears himself asking, “Is he mine?”
“I beg your pardon?” She spins around to face him.
“I said, is he mine?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” Her voice is controlled, but her fury fans the redness in her skin, makes her nostrils flare, forces her shoulders back, her head up and her chest forward. He’s sure he sees her nipples harden under the white cotton. As he becomes aroused, he’s aware of the damn cataplexy kicking in again. He curses how it works: any strong feeling makes his knees buckle and his muscles go weak. He holds on to the bar for support.
“Gracie, don’t —”
“Don’t under any circumstances call me ‘Gracie.’ ”
She has every right, but it still hurts. “But … ”
“As Prince Hal said, ‘But me no buts.’ ”
“I’m sorry. I’d no idea that I was offending you.” He doesn’t tell her that it isn’t Hal. “This is important.”
“You are telling me what’s important?”
“I want you to answer me.”
“You’ve no right to an answer.”
“I may have no right, but the child has a right.” His quick wits surprise him; the child has snuck in on his own.
“That child is as fine and happy as a child can be.”
“That’s now. Now is changing into tomorrow as we speak.” He is struggling. “I wrote again and again. You never answered, not even a postcard.”
”I don’t know about any letters. I do know you lied.”
“I didn’t lie.”
“You said your marriage had broken down, that you hadn’t slept with your wife in years.”
“I said I hadn’t slept with her, and that was true.”
“Don’t bring your sophistry to me. Have you any idea of the grief you caused me, caused us?”
“And what about the grief you caused me? You simply expunged any possibility of communication between us.”
“I called your office from Mabuli when I found out I was pregnant. I was worried sick I might have AIDS.”
“You thought I might have a sexually transmitted disease?”
“Arthur Ashe died from AIDS. Better men than you have had it. What did I know about your sleeping habits?”
“Watch yourself, Grace.”
“Don’t you bring any of your testosterone into this, Chancellor. It’s already caused enough trouble.”
“And which of your hormones do I indict?”
“Indict any of them, all of them. I don’t care. I call halfway across the world and get your secretary who says, ‘He’s at home. This is the number.’ ”
“Which I left precisely in case you called.”
“Precisely? Could I have supposed you’d have done that with a wife commanding centre stage? And guess who answered? Some woman saying she was your wife — unless, of course, the person changing her sari in the room next door isn’t your wife? Maybe she’s a figment of both our imaginations?”
The figment joins them. This sari is blue-green, trimmed with gold braid, and she’s altered her jewelry and eye shadow, shoes, and purse.
He feels the skin of sweat on his face, sees the sheen on Grace’s.
Mona observes them, a cat studying mice. “It’s ten to. I think we should all go down. Thanks so much for spending this time with us, Grace.” Mona waves Grace before them as they go towards the door and smiles up at him. The bindi on her forehead is a bright third eye peering at him from the face of some enigmatic creature out of the Ramayana.
In the foyer downstairs Mona goes over to greet the principal and his wife. As he and Grace stand together, he asks again, “Is he mine?”
She looks up at him and mouths a prolonged and exaggerated “No.”
56
Groaning Towards the Spirit
After lunch the women return to The Xooana to change for the graduation ceremony, while the men go to be further briefed on arrangements for security.
Upstairs, Grace is unsteady on her feet because of the pain. As she shoves her door hard to open it, she notices that the blister now covers
almost all her upraised hand. It has acquired black spots, and the itching has turned into soreness. The blister and spots make her think of jiggers, though, what with the size of the bubble of skin, they’d have to be gigantic! Once when she was maybe eight or so, Ma used her slimmest needle to pick a female jigger, swollen with eggs, from under her second toe. She explained to Grace that you had to remove the whole creature in one piece, for if the eggs escaped, each one would plant itself, lay its own eggs, and eventually the heap of jigger fleas chomping away would devour your foot, leaving only bone. Sort of like the AIDS virus injecting its DNA into healthy cells, spreading as they multiply.
“It’s the way with nature, Grace.” Ma held the miniscule creature up against the light. “Everything fix on growing and making itself again, groaning like Romans say towards the life of the Spirit. Everything, jiggers included.” Even then, Grace thought that peculiar. How could her mother see flesh-eating fleas as nature “groaning towards the life of the Spirit?” Might HIV/AIDS be a manifestation of that groaning towards the Spirit too?
As she steps into her room, she trips on the carpet and falls flat. When she tries to get up, she can’t move. At that point she admits what she’s known all along. These are no jiggers. These are symptoms that all WHO personnel are familiar with, manifestations of a macabre disease, the stuff of science fiction. Jiggers, even giant ones, she’d be grateful for. She can’t face this. She closes her eyes, falls asleep instantly and dreams that Jimmy is showing Jeremiah how to fly a kite which gently lifts them both aloft into a dark sky out of which grow ground orchids in purple, pink, and orange. Jeremiah is about to put one in his mouth. Her impulse to stop him wakes her up long enough to drag herself to the bed, where she collapses again. Pain is ravaging her hand. Trust Papa God! Her shining moment, and she’s going to die right in the middle of it! Punishment no doubt for saying she has more brains in her little finger than God has in his head. It’s all on account of a finger; one tiny digit has given mortal offense. She thinks of Pa, envies his placid stump.
She’s dreaming again, making her way through snow falling in plump, heavy flakes that are warm to the touch. She is crying, tears and nose-nought mixing up with snowflakes on her face to make a kind of elemental mush. Now and then, she takes the sleeve of her down jacket and swipes the sticky mess. Not so smart, for the jacket’s material, whatever it is, can’t absorb any of the stuff, so her face is wet, and pale green slime streaks the sleeves.
Standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross Baldwin and walk the short distance to Beloved, she slips and nearly drops in front of a car making its way around the corner. A big, tall, white skinhead man puts out his hand and catches her, and she looks up into mismatched eyes, one grey and one green.
“You all right?” he asks.
She can’t smile, can’t talk, so she nods her head, swift bobs up and down. The man looks around, not sure what to do, maybe trying to find somewhere to take her, or someone to help him, and she realizes he’s still holding her up. He’s starting to speak when Maisie, all in white — mink coat, Gucci purse, and boots — emerges out of curtains of snow, a glittering goddess, commanding the space on the sidewalk, grabbing Grace, smiling, and saying, “Many thanks. I’ll take care of her.”
Maisie is a strong woman — just as well, for she is able to sling one arm around Grace, and use it to steady her and keep her on her feet. The warm, close human body is a comfort, and the familiar smell of Maisie’s perfume, French, expensive, over-proof, Belle Mademoiselle, or Jolie Madame, or something, marches into her nostrils with such firm strides that it wakes her up.
The bubble now covers the hand beside her on the bed and is making its way up her arm. Underneath feels like soup. It’s not itching any more, only hurting worse than labour pains, worse than toothache, worse than any hurt she has ever felt in her life. Her body is full of awareness, every cell responding to an alarm bell, a siren, a wailing korchi. She can feel the spaces between nerve endings in her brain, and she knows the moment of knowing, the vibration of the old word, “korchi,” as it leaps across her synapses. She must get up and force herself down the hall to their door. Mona is there changing for the ceremony. The woman is no fool, she who called and invited Grace to join them for sherry, who asked about Jeremiah, who retired to change the wine-sprinkled sari. Grace recalls how she’d looked at the two of them when she came back outside.
She’s about to knock when the door opens to reveal Mona, regal in purple, dark hair falling around her like a silk wrap.
“Grace! What’s wrong? You look awful.”
“I’m in dreadful pain, and my arm is doing something peculiar. Look. I think I’m really ill, so you, you should probably stay far from me.” She knows that probably won’t do any good — except perhaps persuade Mona Blackman she’s a thoughtful person. “Could you call an ambulance, please? I’ll wait in my room till it comes.” The last thing she hears is Mona shouting, “Mark!” as she crumples in the doorway.
57
Your Cheating Heart …
Having come back from the graduation ceremony by six o’clock, Mark and Mona are sitting, quiet, in their room at The Xooana, which is dark and cool. She asks for an update on the murdered minister, but there is no word on him. The curfew is still on, and the security situation is much the same.
Mark thinks he’d better get on with it. “So, aren’t you going to say anything?”
“Anything like what, Mark?”
“Anything like anything, Mona.”
“Okay. Anything.”
“You sound like a child playing a game.”
“And who has been behaving like a child playing a game, Chancellor?”
“Me, I suppose?”
“Throw a stone into a pig pen, the one that go quee-quee, is him it lick.”
“If I’m a pig, then that child is my piglet. If he isn’t, I have a pig double somewhere in the universe.”
“Mark, that’s such an endearing admission of adultery.”
“Mona, we been married a long time. You’re as familiar as my own bad breath.”
“Thank you. You’re Prince Charming this evening.”
“That’s how I’m certain you been on to this thing from the start. All along I had a feeling, though, honestly, I’ve no idea how you could have found out.”
“You listening to yourself? I need to be sure I’m hearing what you’re saying.”
“I know very well what I’m saying. I’m saying you knew about Grace and me. Not that there’s very much to know.”
“If you gave her a baby, there’s enough to know.”
“That’s all there was to it. I suspect you knew about the child too.”
“Don’t you think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick?”
“I’m not dealing with any stick.”
“You quit that then? Good. Glad to hear it.”
“Grace, this is not a laughing matter.”
“I’m not Grace, Mark. I’m Mona.”
He fumbles. She doesn’t pause. “That makes it even less of a laughing matter. I thought I knew men from these islands pretty well. I thought I knew you very well, but you manage to astound me. You’ve just found out you have a child, just admitted you’ve been unfaithful, and just seen your baby-mother go off to hospital looking like she’s at death’s door, and all you can say is the child looks so much like you he must be yours, and you’ve no idea how I could’ve found out about your infidelity?”
“They’re the first two things that came to mind, so I said them. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing at all wrong with saying what’s on your mind. But I’d have hoped those thoughts might have taken second place to expressions of concern for even one of the three people I’ve mentioned. Jeremiah is four years old. He doesn’t know he has a papa, and, never mind that Grace has been raising him without letting you know that he exists, you may jolly well end up being his only parent. I won’t bother to go on about the gravity of her present circumstanc
es, and I’ll resist making any comment about where I stand in all this.”
“You stand where you’ve always stood.”
“No, Mark. That’s where you’re wrong. You’re only just learning about it, but I’ve known that you were Jeremiah’s father for over two years now. Jan Leighton called me and told me she’d met Jeremiah and his grandmother in Geneva at a luncheon put on by some Caribbean social group, and he was your dead stamp.”
“Trust your mouth-a-massy friend.”
“She doesn’t like you either. So I went to see for myself and found out that my husband had not only been unfaithful, but he’d fathered another woman’s child, conceived like spite after our baby dies, swatted like a fly in his sleep. Ergo, I am married to a Royal Rat — and I’m not talking about Reepicheep either.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“A mouse of noble lineage in the Chronicles of Narnia.”
“Oh, for the love of God! Not in the middle of this! Mona, let’s cut the crap! We both know this isn’t the first time I’ve been unfaithful.”
“Is that so?”
“You expected me to be celibate when you were looking at me like I was something that smelled bad every time I touched you?”
“Being celibate is not impossible, my village ram. Some men are celibate for their entire lives.”
“That’s unnatural.”
“You sound like some born-again fundamentalist. Celibacy is old as man’s belief in God: holy men of every tradition — monks, priests, shamans — are celibate.”
“They have a religious motivation. Marriage is about two people becoming one flesh. It’s carnal. Your body abdicated a responsibility to mine.”
“Our baby had just died! It can’t have been easy for you, and I’m sorry. But I was ill. I couldn’t help myself. We’ve been through that.”
“Well, I couldn’t help myself either.”
“If you say so. We’re straying from the point.”
“Which of the many?”
“I’d have been reassured if your first thought had been for the child, or for the child’s sick-unto-dying mother, or for me — somebody other than yourself.”
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