Nola gasped. That was no pothole, it was a security system! A moat, no less! Wonder of wonders! If only Palm View had had one of those, they could have kept out the likes of Eric McKenzie! Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted as she realized that the car was now speeding towards her hiding place. She pressed back against the post, holding her breath on a prayer, then expelling it with relief as the car sped past, stinging her with a barrage of gravel.
Suddenly, a realization hit her. The grate! It had to be replaced, which meant the cornrows would have to still be up at the wall! She peeped out once again, and sure enough, there they were lowering the grill behind the guinep trunk.
Nola ran. Hauled up her rags and ran straight across the street to the grey gate. The dogs, ecstatic at the apparent offer of a game, joined in the gallop and raced ahead of her, straight up the street to where the cornrows stood.
Nola’s heart did a painful flip when she saw that a thick padlock hung from the gate, but as she rammed her hand through and grabbed it, she realized that it hung open. Lucky Nola Day! She nearly laughed with relief as the latch slid aside, but the feeling was short lived as the metal grated loudly across the bar. She did not stop to check if the sound had been noted by the cornrows, just hurriedly pushed the gate open and slipped inside, searching wildly for another hiding place. She spotted a June Rose bush in the corner of the yard and rushed behind it, anxiously holding her breath as she waited for the cornrows and dogs to come galloping through the gate.
Praise God, they hadn’t heard! Again, Nola almost laughed again, the relief obviously making her giddy. She released her breath in a loud whoosh, but was suddenly aware of another sensation. Burning. Her skin was burning all over, as if someone had lit a fire beneath her rags. She squinted at the bark of the June Rose bush and saw that the outer layer was moving! A fine, golden army of Pickle-Dickle ants marched hysterically along the branches, some having already launched the attack.
Before she could stop herself, she jumped from the bush and began stomping her legs, trying to knock the creatures out of her rags. However, as she jumped around, her eyes snagged on something, and she froze.
Eric’s black Honda sat in the garage right in front of her! As Nola stared at the vehicle with her jaw lolling open, everything suddenly began to make sense—the missing street sign, the watchmen hidden within the woodwork at every corner, the moat—everything reeked of Eric McKenzie! This ugly grey house that looked like the fly pitching on the rainbow, belonged to Eric McKenzie!
Nola stared, the burning on her skin miraculously disappearing beneath the shock of her discovery. Surprisingly, the house was not one of the extravagant three-storey ones. It had just two levels, but two levels peppered with so many windows that it reminded Nola of a castle. A prince’s castle to go with the moat.
There was music coming from within the house, the faint bass of reggae reverberating from somewhere on the second floor. The acknowledgement of activity shook Nola from her shocked trance and sent her scampering over to the car. She ducked between the shiny vehicle and the wall of the garage, trying to figure out what the hell to do next as she rubbed at her welted neck. If this was Eric’s house, and the smoking woman was here, then Petra had to be close by!
She gathered her rags and scurried to the front of the car, but just as she reached the bumper, she became aware of another sound—a low, grating hum. She peeped out cautiously and spotted a white front door. But the sound was from somewhere to the left. She stuck her neck out a little further and gasped, quickly withdrawing behind the car once again. There was a man asleep in a chair! It was his loud snores that she was hearing.
She’d gotten this far, there was no way she could stop now. As another grating snore rang through the garage, she hauled up her rags and ran to the closed door, grabbing the handle. Open! In three seconds flat, Nola was inside Eric McKenzie’s house!
CHAPTER
44
The smell of hot oil and onions flamed Nola’s nostrils as she tried to adjust her eyes to the dim light. She pressed herself back against the wall, her feet stumbling over something on the ground as she blinked to force her eyes into focus. She panicked for a few seconds, not knowing which part of the house she’d entered. Was she being watched as she stood there, blinking like a peeny-wallie? She braced herself for a blow, listening carefully for the sounds of someone’s approach, but she could only hear the clank of pots.
In a few seconds, her eyes focused on the narrow passage, and she jumped when she saw a silent figure standing beside her. Just as she was about to tear through the house screaming Petra’s name, she realized that it was just a wooden hat rack, its four-pronged arms covered with caps and one brightly-coloured umbrella.
She tried to move quietly up the passage, but stumbled again. Eric’s shoes were lined up against the wall, shining even in the dim light. Nola sneered in disgust at the sparkling leather. They were probably left there so that they wouldn’t soil the floors of his precious house.
She hurriedly tiptoed towards the light at the end of the passage. The left side led to the clanking pots, the right towards another dim room. Nola squinted into the room and made out an ironing board, a chest freezer, and several white cupboards mounted on the wall. But it was the freezer that caught her eye. Huge, taking up most of the wall on the right side of the room. The type Mama would have died for.
The room to the left was obviously the kitchen, for the smell of the food and the sound of the pots were stronger now. Nola peered cautiously round the wall. Pristine and white. Everything white—the cupboards, the toaster sitting on the counter, the plates stacked in the drainboard, the stove with its steaming pots, even the plastic garbage bin beside the sink. The only thing not white was the woman standing in front of the sink.
She wore a faded orange dress with white bleach marks splattered down the back. She was a big woman, wider even than Aunt May and Mrs. Spence. Her socked feet were shoved into bedroom slippers with the stitching bursting open at the sides. From behind, her shoulders sloped dramatically, as if someone had removed the bony blades causing the heavy flesh to sag like old lumpy cushions. As she energetically scrubbed something in the sink, the loose flesh under her arm slapped nosily against her sides.
As if sensing that she was being watched, the woman turned, and once again, Nola gasped.
Ugly! As much as Nola had said she would never use that word to describe another human being, she could find no other word for this woman. Her face looked like it was slipping off the skull. The skin drooped even more than her shoulders, the jowls of her cheeks almost reaching her chin and waffling erratically with the momentum of her sudden turn. One eye was sealed shut, a solid blanket of skin pulled taut over the section where the split should have been. The other one was barely visible beneath its own sagging lid. Her skin was the colour of weak tea. But her lips! They were the most shocking feature of all—the deepest pink Nola had ever seen on a human face. They rounded into an ‘O’ of surprise as her eye registered Nola peeping from the doorway.
Again, Nola’s panicked mind told her to run and scream for Petra, especially now with the woman frozen with shock, but something in that half-open eye kept her rooted to the spot. Surely she’d made a mistake. This could not be Eric McKenzie’s house with this hideous woman in it!
“Ratta!” The woman spoke, pointing at Nola’s head.
Nola’s mind raced along the familiar channels which had given rise to the many stories to buffer Papa’s belt.
“Water,” she eventually croaked, grabbing her neck and making her voice crack as if with thirst. “Please for a drink of ice water.”
The woman smiled, sending the cheeks waffling once again. She slapped her soapy hands against her skirt and beckoned for Nola to come in.
Nola looked behind her shoulder to make one last check that no one had followed her into the house as the woman took a glass from one of the cupboards and filled it at the pipe. Then, with both hands wrapped carefully around it, the woman h
anded Nola the glass with the reverence of handing over a gift.
Nola accepted it with a grateful nod and drained it. She handed it back to the woman who took it with another pink smile. She beckoned again, this time with a little jump on her pulping feet.
“Baba!” she said, in a voice childlike with excitement. Childlike, despite the grey tinges along her hairline.
Grampy would have called her ‘feeble minded’, like Lincoln, Miss Terry’s first son. Lincoln used to pee his pants every day, even after he’d grown a beard. He would walk behind his mother, twisting his fingers and looking down at his feet, and suddenly there would appear a big wet spot at the front of his pants. Grampy used to say that there was nothing wrong with the boy, that he was just a little feeble in the mind like some people were feeble in the limbs and couldn’t lift heavy things.
“Baba!” the woman said again, pointing at the counter beside a white fridge.
A doll was cotched up against a telephone directory beneath a white wall phone. It was as hideous as the woman pointing to it. Just a few tufts of black matted hair remained on its stained head, the rest of the scalp dotted with the large holes which once held the absent tufts. Both eyes were missing. It was dressed in a tattered yellow blouse, the bottom half of the body left bare, exposing the joints where the legs were wedged into the rigid torso. The woman picked it up gently, rocking it in her arms before offering it to Nola.
“Baba …” she whispered, her face softening with tenderness.
With another look behind her shoulder, Nola stepped forward and took the doll. The woman handed it over as gingerly as if she were handing over a live infant, one hand beneath the bottom. Nola followed suit and held the doll gently, imitating the woman’s rocking motion. The woman giggled and touched Nola’s head.
“Ratta,” she said in awe, fingering Ab’s dreadlocks. Then she put a stubby finger against Nola’s lips and whispered “Ssshh.”
She smelled good despite her tattered appearance. Baby lotion. Nola knew the smell well from having rubbed Kendra’s skin with it every morning and evening.
“Baba sleep,” the woman said, then touched her own lips, ‘Sshhh’.
Nola nodded. “Baba sleep … no noise … no talkin’,” she whispered eagerly.
The woman giggled again and pulled Nola by the elbow to a white chair in the corner. It sat in front of another door, which Nola hoped beyond hope was not a room from which Eric or the smoking woman would suddenly emerge.
The woman pushed gently on her shoulder, indicating that she should sit in the chair, but Nola shook her head, looking nervously at the doorway. She could still hear the music coming from the upper floor.
She grabbed the woman’s hand. “Eric? Eric live here?” she asked anxiously.
The woman’s cheeks seemed to fall even more, shaking violently as her eye widened. She bit hard on her bottom lip, the pink disappearing into white gashes beneath the pressure of her teeth. It was her turn to look anxiously behind her shoulder as she took a step back from Nola.
“No! No! Opi behave. Opi cook! Opi wash! No tell Eric!” she pleaded, waving her hands hysterically.
“No, no!” Nola dropped the doll into the chair and grabbed the woman’s hands. “I not tellin’ Eric!” Nola pointed at herself. “I not tellin’ Eric. I just want to know where him is!”
But the woman had spotted the doll lying on its face in the chair. Her breath escaped in a noisy rasp from her nose. “Baba!” she shrieked.
“No! Sshh! Sshh!” Nola quickly grabbed the doll and put it on her shoulder, bouncing like she did when Kendra fussed. “Baba sleep! Sshh! See? Nola put Baba to sleep.”
Nola plopped into the chair and hummed, noting with relief that the woman’s lip popped back out from beneath the teeth, the pink rushing back even stronger than before. She returned to the sink, happily eyeing the doll on Nola’s shoulder as she removed four ears of corn, still in their pale green husks, and began shucking them. She stopped to caress the silken threads that lay around the buttery kernels.
“Ratta!” she grinned as she plopped some of the golden threads on top of her head. She pointed at Nola’s own fake locks. “Opi ratta too!”
Rasta! That’s what she’d been saying all along! Ratta! Rasta!
There was something about the woman that warmed her heart. The simplicity of her. The purity within the heavy folds of her face. The pink, eager smile. That smile, so similar to another that had also transformed heavy features. She watched as the woman plopped the naked ears of corn into one of the pots on the stove and held her face over the cloud of steam. Her skin soon gleamed with fine droplets of precipitation—just like the dew angels wash!
Nola shook her head hard. What was going on with her, getting so weepy about Dahlia and the dew angels while she sat in Eric McKenzie’s kitchen, of all places!
Suddenly a door slammed, and the sound sent Nola flying out of the chair. Eric! The doll fell to the floor, but this time she grabbed it up before the woman could react. She stuffed it into the woman’s hands and gripped the spongy shoulders.
“Hide!” Nola pointed at herself. “Ratta hide! Eric don’t like Ratta!”
Nola watched with relief as the eye cleared with understanding, then blinked with thought. The woman pointed at the door behind the chair and hauled Nola over to it, opening it and then shoving Nola inside before shutting it again.
It was dark inside, but just before the door had been shut, Nola had glimpsed shelves of canned goods and other food items. It was a pantry. She leaned against the door and listened carefully as the woman’s heavy feet shuffled towards the stove. Soon, another set of footsteps clipped into the kitchen and Nola heard the smoking woman’s voice.
“Hopey,” she rasped, “Why the hell you have to mess up the stove every time you cook? See the pot boilin’ over! You better clean it up before Eric come down!”
Hopey. Opi? … Hopey!
The sound of hurried, shuffling feet, then running water, then shuffling feet again.
“Good ting him not eatin’ here tonight. Him goin’ out, so just take up dinner for the girl.”
The girl! Was it Petra she was speaking about? Nola nearly jumped out of the cupboard with excitement.
“Nuh eat!” Hopey moaned. “She nuh eat!”
“Well, keep tryin’! I sure she not goin’ starve herself! She will eat when hungry bite her good and proper!” The woman’s voice was closer now. Right beside the cupboard. The soft creak of wood indicated that she’d sat in the chair. “Me don’t have no time to run after her like she’s some pickney! Just take the food up and leave it there till she ready to eat! And the kitchen stinks. Hopey, mind you make Eric get vex again, you know! You know him don’t like the food smell in the kitchen!”
Eric didn’t like the food smell in the kitchen! Where else would the food smell be? Nola bit her lip. A monster even in his own home.
Something was sprayed, then sweet air freshener crept beneath the pantry door. Someone coughed.
“Stop that, Hopey! You spray the damn ting straight in my face!” The smoking woman sucked her teeth and Nola heard her feet clip hurriedly towards the passageway. “I gone! I come back tomorrow and try to dress her again. See another spot of grease there by the oven handle! Wipe it off before Eric come!”
Then the feet clicked down the passage and towards the garage door. Nola stayed inside the pantry, waiting for a signal from Hopey that it was safe to come out. But none came. Had the woman forgotten about her already?
Suddenly, another smell crept beneath the doorway, and Nola realized why the door had not been opened. Eric’s cologne! He had entered the kitchen without so much as a scrape of heels, as silent as the serpent that he was. Nola sucked in her breath, suddenly fearful that her breathing could be heard through the door.
The sound of the fridge door being opened, the hiss of a bottle cap being popped off.
Nola leaned closer to the door—there was no heavy shuffle of feet. Hopey was standing still.
/> And then he spoke. “If you cook any more of that nasty food and stink up the kitchen like this again, you goin’ be sorry.” His voice was quiet. Quiet and calm as if he were wishing Hopey a good night’s sleep. “Throw that nastiness in the garbage and put it outside so it stop stinkin’ up the place!”
“Opi nuh eat, Peta nuh eat yet.”
Then, that very, very familiar sound. Nola would know it if she heard it through an iron wall—skin striking skin. The woman grunted in pain, and Nola’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle her own gasp.
“You don’t hear what I say? Throw it away, now!”
Shuffling feet, hurrying across the kitchen, metal grating against the stove, rustle of food splashing against plastic, a hhmph from Eric, then silence. Nola pressed her ear hard against the door for the thudding of her heart was suddenly drowning out all other sounds.
Eric’s voice came muffled from the passage. “And how the hell all my hats get on the ground?”
Then Nola heard another shout. This time it came from the garage. Then another thwack of splitting flesh and plastic scraping against concrete. Eric had found his sleeping watchman.
Nola remained in the pantry even after the distant hum of the car engine told her that Eric had gone and the shuffle outside told her that Hopey had resumed her tasks. She stayed as still as one of the cans on the shelf, wondering if someone else had silently entered the kitchen, preventing Hopey from opening the door.
After a while, when her skin began to sweat from the stifling heat in the cupboard, she slowly cracked the door and peeped out. Hopey was bent over the garbage bin, ladling stew into a white bowl.
“No, Hopey, dirty! Make you sick!” Nola whispered.
The woman turned to face her. The right side of her mouth was even more crimson than before, a bruise beginning to lift the upper lip. A smudge of blood smeared down to her chin, but she smiled when she spotted Nola and beckoned eagerly.
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