“Yes?” the woman said, raising her eyebrows impatiently.
“I … I … sorry … I lookin’ for Louisa, or … or Sadie Chambers.”
The woman frowned and cocked her head towards the interior of the room. “Miss Sadie in here, Hon, but I’m tidying her right now. Who are you? Cause it’s not everybody Miss Sadie want to see.”
Her voice was rounded, in the way that Olive would have called ‘stocious’. The manner in which the ‘uptown’ Kingstonians spoke.
“Tell her … Nola. Tell her Nola come.”
The woman’s frown gave way to a widening of the eyes. She walked slowly from behind the door and approached Nola, touching her cheek in amazement.
From the doorway she’d seemed to be in her early thirties, but up close Nola could see creases beneath the film of sweat, panning out from her eyes and mouth, and grey streaks within the tight bun of her hair. She was probably in her late fifties, like Aunt May.
“So Sades wasn’t speaking foolishness after all,” the woman whispered, “You really are alive! She told me what happened, you know, how you got outta here before those scavengers ripped you apart, but I didn’t believe her, thought it was just the pain talking. Everybody round here says that your bones long gone with the witch. You know something, Hon?” she whispered conspiratorially, her eyes still moving disbelievingly over Nola’s face, “now that you’re older, you look just like your poppa!”
Then she turned and went back into Mama’s room. “Come quick. She’s been asking for you.”
But, Nola could not move. She just stood there, staring at the empty doorway until the woman’s face appeared again with its original frown.
“Come!” she said, and when Nola still did not move, she walked up to her and gripped her shoulders. “Look here, Hon,” she said, her voice coaxing and gentle now, “She doesn’t have much longer, and now that I see you, I realize what she’s been waiting for. You need to take a deep breath and get yourself together and come see your mama. I know it’s not easy. I’ve been through it with my own poppa, but you have to help her find some peace, Honey. She’s in a lot of pain.”
“I just … don’t know … what to say,” Nola stammered.
The woman cocked her head to the side and gave Nola’s shoulders a slight shake. “Don’t know what to say?! You don’t have to say anything! That’s your mama in there! She just want to see you, Hon, to know that you came back to her, that’s all.”
Nola swallowed the lump in her throat. Lady, you don’t understand. It’s not the villagers why I had to leave home, It’s my own mama and papa who didn’t want me! How could she explain to this woman, this stranger, that the shame of her existence had been too great for this same mama who was now asking for her? How could she understand, with her gentle, sympathetic, unknowing eyes, that the last time Nola had tried to get close to her mama, her mama had stuck her in the eye with pepper on her fingers, and for days after that Nola’s eyes had watered, not just from the pepper, but from the unbearable pain in her chest? But she swallowed her words and nodded at the woman.
The woman gave a satisfied nod and gently pushed her towards the bedroom door.
“Go on. I’m going to pick some mint from the yard to make tea.” Then she pointed again at the door before stepping over Nola’s bag and going outside.
Nola looked towards the dim living room. The clock had stopped ticking. Its dusty face stared silently back at her, its hands frozen beneath the hazy glass. She sighed and moved towards Mama’s door, pushed it open and stepped in.
There were curtains hanging over the windows now, yellow curtains which were drawn shut. They gave the room a yellow glow, as if everything had become covered in gold. It was the same bed, the one over which she’d bent to touch Papa’s cheek. Mama was lying in the middle, now, not on the left side where she’d always slept, but in the middle, tucked tightly within crisp white sheets. There was a pink wash basin and a pile of folded wash cloths on one bedside table, and on the other, a bottle of rosewater, the bottle of Savlon and a few tablet vials similar to the ones in the kitchen.
“Mama …” Nola said, but her voice only came out as a whisper. Mama did not hear her. She moved closer to the little body, and it was only when she got to the foot of the bed that she saw that her mama’s eyes were open.
They were staring at her.
Nola took a deep breath. The eyes seemed so big, so overpowering in the skeletal face. The skin was pasted back against the sheets, and the bags and folds that had once covered Mama’s eyes now lay like pouches at the sides of her face. Despite the shockingly gaunt look of Mama’s face, it was the eyes that shocked Nola the most. They shone. They shone as if thay did not belong on that fading face.
Never in all her years of being on this earth, had Nola thought she looked anything like Mama or Papa or Louisa, or Grampy. Never had she seen anything of herself in her family. She had only seen a resemblance in that tiny picture beneath her bed, to that sad, dark face that had stared back at her like an omen. But now, after all these years, she looked at Mama’s fading face and she saw what she saw in the mirror after she’d removed Grampy’s towel, when she’d looked at herself for the first time through her own eyes, and not the eyes of the Redding folk—I have Mama’s eyes!
“Hello, Mama.” she whispered.
Imagine that? Eight years of not seeing or speaking to the woman who gave birth to her, and she greeted her like she would anyone else on the street—Hello Mama!
But Mama just kept staring. Nola wondered if she was really awake, or under the effects of some medication that had put her into a wide-eyed daze. She looked anxiously to the door for some sign of the strange woman, but she could hear nothing in the kitchen. She guessed she would just have to wait until Mama woke up. She pulled the plastic chair closer to the bed and sat uncomfortably beside the wide eyes. It was then that she recognized the other smell in the room—the slightly stinking odour of something rotting—Dear God! Mama!
Before she could stop herself, she reached out and touched Mama’s cheek. The skin felt like dry ash, ready to disintegrate if she squeezed too hard.
Then, suddenly, Mama turned her face into Nola’s palm. Nola felt the wetness before she saw the tears, falling like drops of dew down Mama’s face and onto her hand.
“Don’t cry, Mama. I … I … come. I come back,” Nola choked.
Something was moving beneath the sheets, slowly, from side to side. It was Mama’s hand. It stopped for a while, then moved again, this time up and down, with a little more urgency to it.
“What you need, Mama? More medicine? Let me get the lady. I don’t know what to give you.”
But Mama shook her head and pumped her hand more vigorously. Nola watched helplessly, looking from the pumping sheet to the empty doorway. Then it hit her—Mama wanted her hand free! She hurriedly pulled at the sheet that had been tucked tightly beneath the mattress, and immediately Mama’s hand wafted up like another piece of ash from the bed.
The knuckles seemed to exist all by themselves, the frail bones of the fingers, overpowered by the large knots, as they rose up to touch Nola’s face. The hand was as cold as the river, shaking in the effort to touch Nola’s mouth. It whisked its ice over the spot that had frozen into its smile, then rose to the cheek that had been branded into a smooth, slippery patch. Then it fell back to the bed, and Mama’s eyes opened even wider to stare up from her pool of tears.
“Little … Bird,” she whispered. “Little Bird.”
Nola felt her face crumple like a piece of paper. She could not stop the sobs that racked her chest. That had been Grampy’s name for her, the name that told her she was his special little one.
“You are … You are a little bird.” There was a touch of wonder in the soft voice. “You spread your wings … you fly … even in the storm. You soared.”
Nola stared in shock through the thick tears. The wings! The bird! It was her that Mama had been staring at in the dream! In her pain, in the rotting of her bo
dy, Mama had imagined her as a great bird, covering the earth in the black shadow of her wings. Or was that what Mama had thought of her all along?—as a dark shadow that would not go away?
“Have … something,” Mama was whispering again, “Have something … for you. Look in the … wardrobe … in the …” she closed her eyes tightly and took several deep breaths, the skeleton of her ribs printing the sheets. “Look under the basket … with my sewing things … the flour bag.” Her hand lifted then fell back onto the bed in a failed attempt to point.
Nola knew the wardrobe. It had always stood in the corner of the room, like an old security guard with its scratched doors and scuffed legs. It had been carved lovingly by Granny Pat’s pappy for his only daughter, many years before she met and married Fin Thomas. It was not one of the large double door types that Mams had in her room, or that was common in most Redding homes, but a smaller one, with a single door on one side, and a stack of drawers on the other. Grampy used to tell Nola that the wardrobe was a special one, because within its meagre space, it held a very large lesson. Grampy said that Granny Pat’s pappy had made the wardrobe with one single cupboard because that was all he could afford to fill with dresses for his daughter. He told Granny Pat that whenever she opened her wardrobe and saw it filled, she would always be satisfied with what she had, but if he’d made the wardrobe larger, with double doors, she would have opened it and seen the empty spaces, and her heart would have yearned for more.
Nola had never been able to tell Grampy when he spoke of that wardrobe with such love, that she hated it. She abhorred it. She could never let him know how much she despised that single door with its delicately carved handle. Behind that door with its special lesson, were Papa’s belts.
Now she walked up to the despised piece of furniture and pulled the handle. She was greeted by the overpowering scent of mothballs. Mama had always kept her church dresses there, and she’d always hung gauze sachets of mothballs around the hangers to keep insects away. She’d kept Papa’s good jacket in there too, and his belts. Now there was no sign of the jackets or belts, just the dresses that had hung from the wiry hangers of Mama’s shoulders.
The basket was at the bottom, brimming with the coloured threads and button boxes that Mama had used to darn Grampy’s and Papa’s pants. Nola lifted the basket, and there, as Mama had said, was the flour bag.
There was a time when that bag would not have been just lying around at the bottom of the wardrobe. There was a time when the recipes that the bag held were hidden and guarded like a precious family fortune. They were the recipes developed by Granny Pat’s mammy, when she’d used overripe fruits left over from her day of selling to make jams and chutneys for her family and friends. Those age-crisped, fruit-stained sheets of paper were passed on to Granny Pat, who’d passed them on to her eldest daughter Irene, from beneath whose mattress Grampy had retrieved them when the woman had died of a ruptured appendix. Grampy had given them to Mama, who’d come to know them so well that she had not needed to read the painstakingly formed letters when she made her chutneys.
Nola also knew those recipes by heart. She used to whisper them out as a child, even though Mama didn’t need them, whisper them with the conspiratory reverence of being part of a special secret—a special family secret. It used to give her so much comfort, to know she was part of that legacy that even the beatings could not take away.
Mama’s eyes were closed when Nola returned with the bag. Her breathing was not as laboured, but the outline of her ribs was still apparent with every intake of breath. It hit Nola then that Mama already wore the body and odour of death, even though life still pulsed through her. But then, maybe that’s how it had always been with Mama—a flimsy shell of flesh over a dazed spirit. That was why her eyes had shocked Nola so. They looked more alive facing death than they had facing life.
“Mama …” Nola whispered, touching her cheek again. “Mama, I have it.”
Mama made a sound, a little murmur, then opened her eyes again. “Tomorrow … give you … tomorrow. Lettie … call Lettie.”
“What? No, Mama,” Nola looked at the empty doorway. So the woman’s name was Lettie. “I … leavin’ early in the mornin’, Mama. I won’t be here tomorrow. You want me to give the bag to Louisa for you?”
Mama shook her head as a frown marred her forehead. “No!”
Nola blinked at the forcefulness of her voice.
“Tomorrow! Tomorrow … I give you! Lettie … call Lettie …” Then she closed her eyes again, biting her lip and grimacing so that the pouches of her face shook.
Nola ran to the door. “Lettie!” she called into the kitchen, and immediately a chair scraped across the floor.
The woman appeared with a plastic jug in her hand. She did not come inside immediately, but stopped and stared at Nola so hard that Nola had to look away uncomfortably.
Nola pointed at the bed. “Mama callin’ you. I think she feelin’ pain.”
The woman nodded and walked over to the bed. “Ready to take the medicine now, Sades?” she crooned soflty. “We going to take that medicine and brush up those teeth, and then we going to get a nice sleep, right Sades? A nice, nice sleep.”
Mama moaned and the woman turned to face Nola. “I made a sandwich and a thermos of mint tea for you, Hon. Just cheese, but I know you must be hungry. Eat.” She nodded towards the bed. “She going to sleep little now. Go eat. I soon come.”
Nola looked hesitantly at Mama. She was moving her head from side to side, the moisture of tears making her face glisten. She made an approach towards the bed, but the woman’s voice stopped her.
“Go eat!” She commanded. Then she sighed when she saw the shivering of Nola’s lips. Her voice was gentler the next time she spoke. “We used to this, me and Sades. We know how to get them cells to start behavin’, so just leave us to it. She soon get to sleep and the pain will go away. You go eat, so when she wakes up you can talk some more.”
Nola nodded and slowly left the room. She heard the bedroom door click firmly behind her as she stood in the kitchen. The sandwich was on the counter under a meshed food cover, but just the thought of putting it to her lips made her belly lurch. It remembered that it wasn’t supposed to eat in this house.
She walked down the passage to Louisa’s and Grampy’s room. The door was open, and Nola realized with shock that it was totally empty. The only item was a dented curtain rod, leaning against the wall in the right corner. The bed was gone, the chest of drawers was gone, even the curtains were gone. Nola held her chest and sniffed the air greedily. Grampy’s smell was gone!
“Hello Grampy,” she whispered at the walls.
Nothing.
She walked to her old room. Empty too. Barren, like Louisa’s. The walls had been painted red. Even the window sills had been painted, with smudges lining the panes. The colour that kept the evil spirits out.
Nola almost laughed out loud. They’d painted the room red to keep her evil spirit out and here she was, standing right in the middle of the room.
“Him don’t live here no more, you know.”
Nola spun around, startled by the voice behind her.
Louisa! Louisa was standing behind her. A much plumper Louisa, but still so pretty, even with her heavy bosom and the face of a woman.
“Louisa,” Nola said, smiling at her sister.
Louisa stared back at her. “Nola … You heal up so good! You face is so … pretty.”
Nola shook her head. “Louisa, please, I heal up because of the things Aggie gave me. She saved my life.”
Louisa nodded. “Is like she was waitin’ just for you all those years. After you left, she just disappear into thin air—like a duppy.”
Nola laughed. “Trust me, she wasn’t no duppy.”
Louisa laughed too. “That’s what Delroy say …” Then, as Nola’s head jerked up, Louisa stopped speaking.
“How is he? How is Delroy?”
Louisa walked across the room to the window, the one which Dahlia and D
elroy had pelted with stones on her birthday. The one through which Louisa had stuffed the red cloth.
Nola stared at the image her sister made against the barren red walls. Louisa had been right. She did look just like a real working lady—in her linen skirt and high heels. Just like the ones Mrs. Spence used to wear.
“Things change a lot round here, Nola. Things change a lot.” She sighed. “Papa don’t live here anymore.”
“His belts gone from the cupboard.” It was the only thing her brain could muster to say.
Louisa turned to face her with surprise. “Everything gone,” she eventually said.
“So where? Where him live now?”
Louisa shrugged. “All ‘bout the place. Him have some friends in Nainsville, sometimes him even sleep in him car. Wherever him feel like. Him say that your duppy won’t leave him alone, that you follow him everywhere, and slap him up when him sleepin’.” She shrugged again. “Finally, I had to tell him the truth, that you was in Kingston, because him was really goin’ off him head, Nola. But him never believe me, say that I just protectin’ your spirit, as usual.”
Nola didn’t realize that her hands had covered her mouth till she tried to speak and her voice was muffled. “So, him don’t know ‘bout Mama being sick?”
“Of course him know! Him say is she harborin’ your spirit, that’s why she sick. Him say that she holdin’ on to you, that’s why you won’t leave. Him don’t come round here too much, just check with me at the store from time to time.”
What was Louisa saying—that after all those years of Mama dedicating her life to Papa, chopping and chopping all day to buy him his new red car, he didn’t come around now that she was dying?
She sniffed. “So who look after Mama?”
“Paulette. You remember Paulette, Mass Tackie’s daughter? She went to study nursin’ in Kingston, and she came back to Redding when Mass Tackie got sick. It was right after him dead that Mama got sick, so Paulette stayed to take care of her. She don’t even charge me, Nola … she say that she and Mama are sisters.”
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