Dew Angels

by Melanie Schwapp

  If the prayers and white rum weren’t successful, then Pastor’s palm certainly would be. The palm had slapped so hard against Nola’s forehead that her teeth had rocked in her gums, and where her jaw had grown a swelling from Papa’s fist, there grew a matching one on her forehead. By the time Sister Norma and Mrs. Spence had bound her in the cloth, her body was so swollen and bruised that no spirit, good or evil, would have had much use for it.

  She lay still in the bed for hours after the wailing and prayers had died down. No one had spoken a word to her since her fit of laughter, addressing only the brazen spirit within her.

  The events had proven too much for Papa to bear, and he’d disappeared while she’d laughed by the pipe. But Mama had stayed, and while the villagers prayed, she had stood silently by the pipe. When the elders took Nola into her bedroom, Mama followed them into the house, but sat at the kitchen table, eyes staring straight ahead, not even looking up at the red bundle of cloth that was her daughter. Nola craned her neck over the screeching heads to try to catch Mama’s stare. She’d wanted to let her know that she was sorry, for the blood on her front lawn, for the bombardment of villagers in her small kitchen, for Papa being gone, but when she finally caught Mama’s eyes, all she could see was dullness—dullness beyond even that of the death in Ellie’s eyes.

  It was the memory of those eyes that had made Nola lie still as they cleared her room of all her tainted belongings. After they left, she closed her eyes and searched the whirlwind in her mind for any hint at the darkness there. Maybe the blackness of her skin really had been an indication of the darkness of her soul. She slumped deep into the cloth. She wanted at once to feel nothing. Remember nothing. Know nothing.

  Then came the dream of the river. She, lying at the bottom with the red water above her, them standing on the banks, laughing at her embedded in the silt—Papa, Mrs. Spence, Pastor, Sister Norma, Mama. Merlene was crying. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she stared at the spot beside Nola. It was Dahlia, lying beside Nola, her lip-nose sticking from the silt like a river slug. Her skin was the grey shade that water made of everything, like she’d been there for a long time. Nola desperately tried to free the girl, but her own arms were buried deep, and the more she tried to break free was the farther and farther away that Dahlia moved. Then suddenly, miraculously, Nola was free from the loamy layers so she could swim to Dahlia and pull her out of the river bed. She heard the girl calling her name, but again, the more she tried to swim to her, the farther she drifted.

  “Nola!” The voice was louder now. “Nola!”

  Her eyes flew open and focused through her wild tears on the face above her. Louisa! Bending over her with anxious eyes. Nola sat up and stared wildly around her. She was naked, the cloth lying around her in strips.

  “Dahlia! Dahlia!” Her words were garbled, as if the water was still in her throat. “Louisa, Dahlia need me! I have to save …”

  Louisa’s hand clapped roughly over Nola’s mouth, “Ssshh, Nola, don’t make them hear you! Them still out there. Them don’t know that I’m in here.”

  The tears flooded from Nola with such a force that her shoulders shook and Louisa had to press her face into her chest to mask the sounds. She cried for a long time, shedding tears that had been waiting for many, many years. When she finally stopped, Louisa tried to wipe her face with the red cloth, but Nola shuddered away. Louisa immediately gathered the strips and shoved them through the bedroom window. Then she put her finger to her lips and disappeared through the doorway. She reappeared with clothes, all her own, and gently guided Nola’s shaking limbs into them. They were a tight fit.

  Nola studied her sister’s face as she helped her pull her arms through the t-shirt. The eyes were bloodshot and swollen, the tip of her nose still red.

  “You want some sour sop tea?” Louisa asked when she’d finished dressing Nola. She sat back on her heels. “Them did make some for Mama. Some still on the stove. It will calm your nerves, Nola, give you some strength.”

  Strength? Strength for what? I just goin’ to do whatever them say. Whatever I suppose to do from now on. No more trouble – whatever them tell me to do. Don’t need no strength for that.

  Nola shook her head. “Where Papa?” she croaked.

  “Him don’t come back yet.” Louisa eventually whispered.

  “I so sorry,” Nola looked down at her hands. “I never mean to hurt Ellie, or Papa. I don’t know how …” Louisa once again put her hand over Nola’s mouth, gentler this time.

  “Ssshh! I know,” she said. “I know you! I know you wouldn’t do that.”

  Nola nodded, biting her lip to stop the tears. She just didn’t have the energy to start crying again. “And Mama? What ‘bout Mama? She … she okay?”

  Louisa nodded thoughtfully. “Them give her the tea and she sleepin’ now. She wanted to see you before she go to bed, but them tell her in the mornin’. I not suppose to be in here either, but Miss Terry drop asleep. Is her watch now.”

  “Mama wanted to see me?” Nola asked.

  Louisa nodded again, and Nola’s heart lifted. Mama had wanted to see her! Even after what she’d done, Mama had wanted to see her. This was her chance to start over, to prove that she could be good. She would be perfect from now on. Not even to the river she would go.

  The river! The dream suddenly rushed back. She had to explain to them! She had to explain everything to Dahlia and Merlene before they heard it through the village. After all they’d done for her, she owed them that. She owed them a proper goodbye.

  She tried to stand, but teetered forward and would have fallen onto her face if Louisa hadn’t jumped up and grabbed her waist.

  “Nola, what you doin’? Sit down before them hear us!”

  “I have to go to them, Louisa! I have to talk to Dahlia and Merlene just one last time. They will understand when I tell them what happen. Them don’t mean no harm, Louisa. Them is good people—good people …” Her voice broke as she pleaded with Louisa.

  She had expected her sister to shake her head and push her back down on the bed, but Louisa didn’t. She didn’t even look surprised. Instead, she bent to the ground, took the rubber slippers off her feet, and placed them in front of Nola’s.

  Louisa looked up, into Nola’s face, “I knew ‘bout you goin’ there in the evenin’s. I knew for a long time. Clarice tell Toneisha, and then Toneisha tell me. But I tell them that if them say anything to anybody, I was goin’ tell everybody ‘bout Clarice and Tulia meetin’ Shane and Oliver behind Razzle Dazzle in the evenin’s.”

  Nola jerked her head and looked into her sister’s weary eyes. “Louisa, I only went ‘cause Slugga told me to! I wasn’t doin’ any nastiness.”

  “I know. I know that. At first … at first I was goin’ to warn you to stop goin’. Then when I saw the look on your face when you come home in the evenin’s—you had that smile. You was just so happy, Nola. I couldn’t stop you.”

  Louisa stared down at Nola’s hands inside of hers. A black pearl within a bronze oyster. She eventually said. “I used to think that you never had the same Papa that I had. I couldn’t understand why he was always so vex with you. I used to wish that your real Papa would come and take you back to your house. Not because I wanted you to leave me, but because I just wanted you to know what it was like to love your papa.”

  Nola swallowed hard and finally managed to squeak, “I love him, Louisa. I love my papa. It’s just that, him don’t love me.”

  Louisa hugged her, fierce and hard. “I sorry I couldn’t do more to stop it.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  Nola stood outside the kitchen door and breathed in deeply, gulping the fresh air she never thought she’d feel again. The act only wrenched another sob from her chest as she inhaled the raw tinge of acid-metal—blood! Ellie’s death still hung in the air.

  Nola negotiated the potholes of Macca Hill by memory. Eventually, the lights of Calabash Street filtered through the trees. Running at a trot, by the time she got to the b
ottom of the hill, she was gasping for breath. Flowing into her nostrils was the unmistakable smell of smoke.

  The shadow billowing into the sky was over Della Way, strongest over the spot where the pink house stood. Suddenly, she understood where Papa had gone that night.

  She ran, right down Jackfruit Lane, on to Della Way, into the bustle of villagers running in and out of a wall of smoke. She could not make out the faces through the thick curtain, but she could see that Miss June’s shop still stood. She squinted at a group huddled in the middle of the road with dripping cloths over their noses—Miss June and Tulia, Skengy and Jervis, shaking their heads agitatedly as they pointed down the road.

  She ran towards where the blaze rose high into the sky.

  The crates were gone. So was the red door. Nola stood frozen in the heat and watched the shutters and walls of Merlene’s Bar and Grill crumple like paper. She raced through the crowd, searching wildly for a familiar feature—an elaborate hairdo, pencil-thin eyebrows, the girth of a co-joined lip-nose. She recognized Clars and Tanky, their chests shirtless and gleaming as they chopped at the prickly privet on the other side of the street.

  She ran behind the bar, Louisa’s rubber slippers softening on the searing ground and sticking to the soles of her feet. She found Bertie there. He stood a few yards back from the crumbling building, his neck craned backward as he watched the flames lick the sky. He held a bucket of water in one hand. In the other, his broom.

  Nola grabbed his arm and her fingers slid downward in the mulch of sweat. He jumped, startled from his daze, but even as he stared into Nola’s face, his expression remained blank. It took a good few seconds for the bewildered mask to lift, and for his eyes to register her face.

  “Bertie! Where everybody? Where Dahlia … and … Miss Merlene?” Nola rasped.

  “Don’t know where them gone. Miss Merlene and all of we was in there …” Bertie shook his head and pointed his broomstick at the flames. “Then Miss Merlene tell everybody to go home ‘cause nuttin’ we can do.”

  Nola gave him a reassuring pat and rushed towards the hedge. The blue flora was now just a speckle of shriveled buds, the once intertwined branches now baring open in sections to reveal the rotted stakes of wood beneath. She raced to the front door. It was locked, and the lights were off. Nola banged on the door, the louvres rattling beside her.

  “Dahlia! Merlene! Is me! Nola! Open the door! It’s Nola! Open up, quick!”

  But no one came. No sound from within. Could they have already left? Would they have left their beloved home unprotected from the fire?

  Suddenly, something brushed against her leg and she gave a startled shriek. Streaky! The pig that lived behind the bar was shaking, his body spinning in circles at her feet. Nola gave a happy laugh and grabbed up his heat-marinated stench.

  “Streaky, where they gone? Where Dahlia? She wouldn’t leave you.” Nola banged on the door again and bellowed. “Dahlia! Streaky is ‘fraid. He out here lookin’ for you!”

  It took just a couple of seconds, but the distinct click of a door being opened reached Nola’s ears. Soon, the front door cracked open, and Dahlia’s lip-nose appeared in the flickering light. It was when the girl’s eyes widened at the sight of her face that Nola remembered her bruises.

  “Dahlia! Thank God! I been callin’ and callin’ you! What you and Merlene still doin’ in there? We have to get water and stop the fire before it reach the house. Bertie out there waitin’ to help us!”

  Dahlia spoke so calmly that Nola blinked in shock. “Nola, the house goin’ be okay. The fire goin’ burn out before it reach the house. We okay. You need to leave now. Take Streaky with you.” She paused and her lip-nose quivered slightly as she studied Nola’s face.

  “Go away before them hurt you some more.”

  Nola shoved her shoulder into the door with a strength that surprised even herself.

  “You mad, Dahlia? You can’t leave Streaky with me. She love you! She need you!” Nola set the pig on the floor, and it promptly ran up to Dahlia and rubbed itself on her leg. “See?”

  “Nola, Puddin’, you have to leave. Take Streaky and go now!” Merlene’s voice came from the bedroom door.

  She looked like an angel. Her purple nightgown shimmered in the silver haze of smoke that had followed Nola through the front door. Her brows became drawn into a deep frown as they registered Nola’s swollen face.

  When she spoke again, her voice was gentler. “This have nothing to do with you, Puddin’, just me and Pumkin. This is someting we have to deal with – nothing to do with you.”

  “Yes, Merlene, it is about me! It’s all about me! I think … I think …” Nola swallowed. “I think that is my papa who set the fire. Him find out that I was coming here in the evenin’s.”

  But Merlene’s expression did not change. She just kept looking at Nola with that knowing look, then shook her head. “Puddin’,” she said. “If it wasn’t your papa, then it would’a been someone else. It was just a matter of time.” She flinched slightly as the sound of crashing wood reverberated through the room.

  “Go now, Nola. Please take Streaky and go before them catch you here!”

  “No!” Nola stepped towards Dahlia. “I not leavin’ if you not leavin’.” It was becoming harder to speak. Thick smoke was creeping into the room from beneath the front door, slivering in between the cracks of the louvre windows.

  Dahlia grabbed Nola’s shoulder and gave it a slight shake and Nola’s heart froze as she looked into the girl’s face. Her skin was grey and ashy within the smoke. Just as it had been in the dream.

  “Nola,” Dahlia said, “Mama and I not runnin’ no more. We can’t let people keep drivin’ us out of our home.”

  “You don’t have to run, Dahlia,” Nola cried. “Let’s just go outside. We can build back the house if anyting happen! Me and Delroy and Bertie and Biscuit and Darlene—everybody! We can build back the Bar and Grill and whatever else the fire burn down.”

  Merlene coughed and fanned the air. “Nola,” she eventually rasped, “Biscuit and the others couldn’t wait for me to build again. Nobody could. Them pay is what them live on. Them couldn’t live without a job for so long, not for the time it would take to build the bar back.”

  Nola’s throat was closing, but she made one last pleading effort. “Then Merlene … we can build … a different kind … of business this time. A restaurant … where everybody would want to come … or a supermarket, like you had in Kingston. Please, please let’s just go outside!”

  She gripped the back of a dining chair. She was going to faint. She knew it. They had to leave now!

  Dahlia coughed too, a bellow of a spit that cooled Nola’s face. She felt her arm being grabbed and then she was being hauled towards Merlene’s room. The smoke was less behind the closed door of the bedroom. A whispy mist swirled persistently behind them as they piled in, and Merlene had to hurry into the bathroom to get a dripping towel to place along the bottom of the doorway.

  Another ruckus rang out from outside. Shouts. Frantic instructions. Then banging on the front door.

  “Fire pon the house! Fire pon the house!”

  It sounded like Tanky, but Nola couldn’t be sure. The louvres shook, and a sudden intolerable heat seemed to swell everything. Nola’s head pounded with the heavy pressure. Merlene and Dahlia ran into the bathroom and brought more wet towels that they wrapped around theirs and Nola’s wracking shoulders. Dahlia held Streaky tight beneath hers while Nola used the dripping tips of hers to squeeze a soothing stream onto her face.

  Another shout from outside. “Them must be gone! Nobody in them right mind would still be in there! Wet round the back before it spread to Tanky farm!”

  Nola saw them look at each other, and she saw the message pass between them. One look was all it took, and the decision had been made.

  Merlene nodded at Nola. “Alright, Puddin’, we goin’ to have to run. We have to run through the front door, so keep the towel tight round your head, and try not to brea
the till you get outside. Don’t make the smoke get in your chest or it will seize up and you won’t be able to run!”

  Nola nodded back with eager relief. They positioned her at the bedroom door to go first. They claimed she was the dizziest and the weakest. Just before they opened it, Dahlia shoved Streaky underneath Nola’s arm and said, “I need to help Mama”. Their faces weren’t visible anymore, but she felt them put another soaking towel around her shoulders. She could hear them coughing and gasping as someone opened the bedroom door.

  The heat was unbearable. It slammed into Nola’s face like a physical blow, sending her reeling backwards until a hand shoved her through the doorway once again. The flames on Merlene’s lopsided sofa were so blinding that it felt as if her eyeballs had gelled into liquid. Her lashes disintegrated, leaving her eyes vulnerable to the ribbons of soot that floated through the living room. Someone pushed her towards the dining table where the plastic cushions melted into sizzling drops onto the floor. Never break! The words rang through the room. They were depending on her! They were depending on her to lead them out of there.

  Never break! Suddenly, survival took over from fear. Nola tucked her head into the towel, squeezed the squirming pig firmly against her hip, and raced towards the front door. The moisture in the towel became steam. Her instinctive reaction was to fling it off, but remembering Merlene’s words about the smoke, she gripped it over her face and felt for the bolt on the door. Her fingertips melted onto the metal. Never break! Never break! The words screamed through her head as she felt herself about to pass out from the pain. She grabbed the tip of the towel and wrapped it around her blistered fingers, then tugged the bolt again. The latch gave, and a hot gush of air burst into the house.

  The fire cackled with new energy, rising to a crescendo which was deafening. Nola jumped.

  The lawn was simmering. She lost her grip of Streaky as she rolled, but heard him squealing beside her and knew he was okay. Instinct got her to her feet once again and took her through the glowing twigs of the hedge, past the crackling skeleton of the Bar and Grill, and flung her in a choking heap on the road.