Dahlia was already on top of him by the time Slugga made it onto the field. She had to shove through layers of students to get to the rolling bodies beneath the tree.
“Enough!” Slugga yelled, bending to grab Dahlia’s collar, but in one fluid movement, Dahlia flapped her arms behind her and released the blouse into Slugga’s hand without missing one stroke on Delroy’s face.
Four more punches to his jaw, and Dahlia eventually jumped up, gripping half of the boy’s shirt in her fist. She stood there in her heaving pink bra, trails of crimson blood decorating the worn lace.
Slugga flung Dahlia’s blouse at her and pulled Delroy to his feet. Then, without a word, she grabbed Dahlia’s arm and hauled the two towards her office.
Half-way across the field she turned around and shouted, “Nola Chambers, you come too!”
Slugga half-flung Dahlia into the chair in front of her desk, then pulled Delroy around to hers. Their bodies wedged for an instant between the filing cabinet and the desk, but Slugga gave Delroy a shove with her rump and sent him hurtling towards her chair. The boy’s scowl deepened as he regained his balance and stood before them with his half-shirt hanging from his left shoulder.
By the time Slugga made it through, sweat drained down her face in milky brown streaks. She pointed at Dahlia. “Put on your clothes!” She spoke through her teeth, so that her words sounded like “Putch ontch yourtch clothetchs.”
Dahlia looked down at her stained bra, seemingly puzzled by her state of undress. She fumbled with the blouse in her lap, trying to find the sleeves while Slugga breathed deep, rasping breaths. Eventually, with a victorious grunt, Dahlia flipped the blouse around and rammed her arms inside. However, when she attempted to button up, she could find nothing but holes where the buttons had once been. She grabbed the two sides of the blouse together and looked blankly up at Slugga.
Slugga just gave an angry snort and pointed again at Dahlia’s lap. Dahlia looked from the half-a-shirt lying there to Delroy, as if unwilling to part with her trophy, but when Slugga’s breathing escalated into a threatening rasp of air, she grudgingly threw it over. Through swollen eyes, Delroy glared at the girl, but he obediently picked up the ripped garment and put it on. When he’d finished, Slugga promptly spun him around and snapped her stapler five times down his back, then beckoned Dahlia to the desk and did the same down the front of her blouse. When she turned to squeeze from behind the desk, Nola grabbed her dangling arm in fright.
But Slugga was only going to the door to ring the end of lunchtime bell.
The excited chatter of the students migrated slowly past them towards the classrooms, some of them peering into the office in the hope of witnessing the aftershock, but Slugga grunted them away. Finally, Slugga turned to address them.
“I’m not interested in who did what to who, or who start what. I just know that I’m tired! Tired of all this discord between the whole lot o’ you.” Her voice really did sound weary. “After much thought, I think the best thing is to force you to get along. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to show you,” A finger wagged at each of them, “how to live in harmony! H-A-R-M-O-N-Y!”
All three of them frowned back in confusion.
“Yes,” Slugga nodded, satisfied with her script, “the three of you going to work together everyday—sit together in class—sit together at lunchtime, do homework together … every evenin’!” the finger wagged from Nola to Dahlia. “I am goin to make sure the three of you learn to stop this wild dog behaviour! I will not have it! Will not have it, you hear me?!”
“But … she box me in my nose and I never do nuttin’ to her. She take the juice box and bust my nose!” Delroy sounded like an off-key trumpet.
“I shaid, I’m not intereshted!” Slugga patted her head, “I want the three of you off my compound right now! Tomorrow morning at seven thirty sharp, report right back here and you can start the day with your new friendship.”
Slugga opened her grade book, flipped to an empty page and wrote something in red ink, right in the middle of the sheet. “Alright,” she said without looking up, “Get out of my office. Get out of my school. Don’t ever let me see that nasty behaviour on this compound, or anywhere else, again!”
And so began the blending of three lives. Not a willful connection, but one formed by a woman whom no one dared disobey … forged with the use of a handy stapler and a red ink pen.
CHAPTER
7
Mango season was a good time for Redding. Trees bowed with the weight of their bounty. The aroma from pots simmering with evening meals was replaced with the scent of mango – mango jams, mango custards, mango juice, mango chutneys, and every roadside was dotted with mango seeds sucked bald.
Mango season was a good time for Mama. The demand for her mango jam and chutney (recipes passed down from Granny Pat) was great, in Redding, in Kingston and abroad. Mrs. Spence bought such large quantities that Tuesdays and Fridays were dedicated to filling her orders alone. Some she sold in Razzle Dazzle, while the rest she packaged in thick sponge and cardboard boxes and sent to New York, where her daughter, Camille, sold them in her West Indian supermarket.
Mama hummed during mango season. This was the time that brought her closer to her goal—the extension of her kitchen. From the time Nola had been able to make sense of words, she’d heard Mama discuss her plans to take the kitchen beyond the step where the mongrel dog slept. There would be an area dedicated just to the preparation of her chutneys and jams, and space enough for a huge freezer to store fruit pulp during the off-seasons.
During mango season, Nola was in charge of peeling the mangoes and slicing the pulp off the seeds. Her hands stained yellow, and sometimes cramped stiffly into the shape of the mangoes – cup-shaped, like Grampy’s. Now, with her duties doubled, she had to rush even more through her evenings at Dahlia’s house.
She learned to balance her two lives—the stress of home, and the relaxation of Dahlia’s. Every afternoon, she and Dahlia would walk into the little pink house to be greeted by some mouthwatering smell (Delroy refused to enter the house, waiting, instead, under the mango tree by the plumbago hedge till they came back out with their stuffed bellies). Merlene would come out of her room with her sleepy smile and colour-coded nightwear and serve them the feast while they filled her in on the day’s events. Then she would wash up while Nola and Dahlia went to join Delroy’s surly face, and the three of them would do Slugga’s assignments beneath a canopy of Blackie mangoes.
Nola was a little surprised that Merlene had never questioned Delroy about the huge swelling he’d given Pumkin’s face that day. She’d waited with bated breath on the first afternoon that he’d trudged unhappily through the hedge for Merlene’s angry accusations, but Merlene had only carried plates of her delicious cooking out onto the front lawn, reassuring Delroy that she didn’t bite while the sun was shining. But he refused to eat, or to laugh at her joke.
Poor Delroy, he couldn’t even have tried to cop out of the punishment, for Slugga had been quite clever in her planning. At the end of each school day, she would staple ten sums into his book, a different set of ten into Dahlia’s, and yet a different set into Nola’s. They were each to do all 30 sums. So Delroy had no choice but to scowlingly work beside them every afternoon.
He remained silent while Nola explained the sums to Dahlia. Only once, on the second day, when Dahlia gave one of her victory whoops, he gave a scornful snort. Nola’s eyes had flown to Dahlia’s face in fright, sure that the girl would have upped and punched him straight in the nose, but she’d acted as if she hadn’t heard, and met the snort with a blank look.
The part of the punishment served at school was nowhere as pleasant as the part at Dahlia’s house. However, it passed quickly enough to be tolerable—every lunchtime they had to sit beneath the eave outside of Slugga’s office where they endured crude gestures from Delroy’s scrimmage crew.
All in all, it wasn’t bad. All in all, it shocked Nola how often she felt laughter bubble i
nvoluntarily from her chest. Balance and timing. That was the key. Balance and timing had given her the best of both worlds, and had made her carefree. It was an intricate trick, but one in which just one shift in the elements could have sent her reeling, as it eventually did.
CHAPTER
8
One afternoon, Nola’s timing was very badly set off. It was the day when Biscuit, one of Merlene’s waitresses, came early to work. She’d brought Bombay mangoes for Merlene, breezing through the hedge on a cloud of Matterhorn smoke, orange talons wrapped around the scandal bag of mangoes. When she flung herself into a chair on the verandah, the air seemed to crackle, every crevice of space filled with the details of her—the flaming hair; the shiny leatherette pants; the red tank top dragged low from the weight of her breasts. Even her voice, roughened by smoke, seemed to shave the air.
Nola was captivated, and Biscuit, bristling beneath the attention of a new audience, immediately embarked upon a tale. The night before, she’d witnessed the arrest of a drug don called Squid. The don had been hiding out in Nainsville (right on Biscuit’s street) with one of his women. A couple weeks before, an off-duty policeman had been shot in broad daylight, within plain view of the other patrons, as he’d sat in a street-side bar. As the policeman fell to the floor, the killer had flipped his body over and removed the firearm from the waist. He then tucked the stolen gun casually into his own waistband, jumped on to the back of a motorbike across the street, on which another man had been waiting, and the two sped off as if they’d just stopped by the bar for a quick drink.
Trouble was, Biscuit expounded, the man waiting on the bike had said to himself, “Make haste nuh, Lucifer,” without taking note of the drunkard lying on the side of the road. It was this drunkard who’d repeated the name ‘Lucifer’ to the policemen. Lucifer, well-known as a member of the Roseblood Posse which operated out of Kinte Lane.
The police entered the lane just as Lucifer had sat down to a plate of cow foot and broad beans, the policeman’s gun still tucked into his waist. After much ‘persuasion’, Lucifer gave the name ‘Squid’ as the person who had ordered their colleague’s murder—$10,000 for the life of the policeman who’d been trying to extort money from the don.
As soon as Squid heard about Lucifer’s arrest he had gone into hiding. It turned out that the very same girlfriend with whom he sought refuge had been the one to inform the police of his whereabouts. She considered herself entitled to the money Squid had brought with him. However, she dipped a little too far into the funds for Squid’s liking, and he hit her right across her face with a table fan.
Merlene shook her head. “Some woman really stupid! Them hide all the bad man them, and is always the same man that turn round and beat them near to death!”
Nola didn’t know if it was her imagination, but she could have sworn that Merlene glanced at Delroy before she began her next sentence.
“You know what I wish?” she continued, “I wish our men would stop beatin’ up the women. The women give them children, give them a home, make ends meet when tings get rough, and them still turn round and beat up the women!” She gave a little sigh.
Nola saw the laughter melt from Delroy’s face. He began plucking at the grass.
“Not me!” Dahlia shouted, “Not me. I not takin’ no beatin’ from any man! I not takin’ no lick from anybody! Them goin’ have to fight me to the bitter end! When I go down, it goin’ be in a blaze of glory!”
Merlene chuckled softly, but when she spoke her gaze seemed suddenly distant. “It’s not every time you have to fight, Pumkin. Sometimes life have a way of just catchin’ up to people, just like it catch up to Squid. Sometimes you just have to sit back and wait, and let the Almighty deal with them in His own time!”
I wish our men would stop beatin’ up the women. Surely Merlene could not have meant your own father? Surely not, when the Bible clearly stated, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”
Nola blinked away the sting that suddenly pricked at her eyes. She looked up into the sky, trying to hide the gleam, and when she looked up, she lost her breath. The sky was orange! The afternoon had skimmed by and now the sky was ripening in the glow of evening. It was a 20-minute walk up Macca Hill! By the time she made it home, the pots with the residue of boiled mango would be piled outside the kitchen door, like an announcement of her tardiness. The pots would be waiting. The mangoes would be waiting. Papa would be waiting.
She ran one full circle around Delroy and Dahlia before she found her bearings and tore into the house past Biscuit’s confused face. She tore off the duster and hauled on her skirt in such a rush that she scraped the hook against her leg. She hadn’t completed buttoning her blouse before she tore back outside, grabbed up her bag, and gasped a hurried ‘good-bye’ to the four faces sitting in silence.
There was music coming from the bar. The deep reggae bass seemed to spur on her racing heart as she walked past the red door. A woman in a tight orange mini skirt and tubed top leaned against the jamb, blowing streams of smoke from her nose as she drew on a cigarette.
Nola ran all the way up Macca Hill, slowing down to catch her breath only when she got to the steep section before the gates of the Open Bible Church. Maybe him listening to the news, she prayed on each breath, maybe him work late at the orchard this evenin’ and him don’t reach home yet.
She passed Miss Terry and Miss Nan resting their heavy hips against a large boulder beside Cecil Reid’s lettuce patch. Further up, Shamoney Leach waited while her four-year-old daughter peed into a pothole. In just a few minutes Nola spotted Mass Tackie’s house. A single kerosene lamp burned through the living room window, even though the old man had received electricity years ago. The house sat like a crown on the top of Macca Hill. It marked the descent to the other side of the hill, where Nola’s’ house was.
Nola paused beside the Mass Tackie’s yard to catch her breath. She could see her house lying at her feet. The kitchen light burned in the evening like a piece of sin. She could see the top of Grampy’s prized thumberga vine hanging like a discarded garment over the eave of the verandah, its leaves dark and shriveled from the black fungus that had finally overtaken it. Grampy used to spray it with powdered pepper and corn oil, to keep the bugs and fungus away, but since his death, the vine had succumbed to the fungus. Nola had tried to spray it once, but Papa had gotten into such a rage over the waste of the cooking oil that she hadn’t done it again.
As she stood there, she realized that Papa’s car was not in its usual spot by the gate. Her heart sparked with a twinge of hope. Had her prayer worked? Had he stayed late at work that evening?
As she pushed her gate open, she thought she heard her name, spoken very softly. She froze and listened. Yes, there it was again, louder this time.
“Night then, Nola. See you tomorrow at school.”
She spun around, incredulous.
Delroy! What was he doing at her gate? He lived on Bogle Lane, way on the other side of Clysdale Bend, a long way from the bottom of Macca Hill. What on earth was he doing at the top of Macca Hill? She shot him a look of confusion as she turned and ran towards the kitchen door.
The three large dutch pots were there, just as she’d predicted, stacked one on top of the other by the outside pipe. Their rims were coated in the yellow gum of boiled mango, and beside them, the charcoal and steel-wool sat accusingly on the steps. The dog lifted his head lazily as she crept past the zinc of pimento to stoop beneath the kitchen window. The house was silent except for the scraping of a knife on the wooden chopping board. The spicy smell of scotch bonnet peppers wafted through the window—seasonings for tomorrow’s batch of chutneys. Then there was the sound of water at the kitchen sink, and the smell of bleach. Nola listened for Papa’s voice, for the raspy whisp of his breath, but there was nothing except the water.
She had to go inside before it got any later. She pinched her leg hard. It was always a good way of preparing herself, just in case he was there. Her body would already be conditioned
for pain. She stood up, then quickly stooped back down as she realized that it was drizzling. The rains had finally come. The mist fell on her braids, the coconut oil repelling the moisture and creating its glistening cap. Your halo, Grampy used to call it. How she wished it was. A halo to take her up to heaven whenever she willed it, far away from this kitchen window.
CHAPTER
9
Nola took a deep breath then opened the kitchen door, assuming a nonchalant look as she dropped her school bag on the counter, right on top of a white mound of cornstarch. The powder wafted like a disintegrating dream over her damp shoes.
“Sorry, Mama. One of Janga’s goats drop in the river. It drop in the deep part, the same part where Jervis’ cow did drown, so we tie rope ‘round him hoof and haul him out, me and Janga ‘cause I was the only one passin’ by when it happen.”
Nola didn’t know where the story had come from. She’d been too nervous to rehearse one as she’d hurried up the hill, but here was one, pouring out of her as easy as the water from the kitchen pipe.
But immediately she saw that she’d been wrong. Her prayers had not been answered. She could tell because Mama’s hands trembled as she washed the chopping board, and Louisa eyes were wide as she looked up from peeling the mangoes.
She felt the shiver begin at her feet and climb its way up her legs, through her stomach and up to her shoulders, till it chattered her teeth. She heard when Papa came from the bedroom, but when she turned, the belt was already raised. He hit her with the buckle. He was never really fussy about where the blows landed. Nola always had to turn away to protect her face, and cross her arms across her chest to protect her breasts.
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