Rainbow Milk

by Paul Mendez

  * * *

  —

  Long time now since we make love. I feel like she is unhappy with me, at the moment. Last night she sleep far from me; at night is the only time we see the same. I listen to her breathe in and out. She smell of her face cream and the oil in her hair. She must smell better than anyone else in that factory where she work. This new face cream she using since we move to England so sweet, but she say it dry her skin.

  Glorie start to wake. She don’t sleep all night yet; still she wake around one. Sometime she cry a little bit then forget what she is crying for and fall back to sleep, but other time she is determine one of we get up to see to her, and normally she want Claudette breast, so I can’t help with that. I feel sorry for Claudette. She work so hard. Glorie only seven-month-old when she lose her mother to the working world. Claudette have to get up every morning come rain or shine to work in the factory, and she only get that job because Doreen there too. Plenty women there making brick. Claudette couldn’t find a job in a restaurant or hotel. They turn her away because she is a black woman; they don’t care about her experience in Jamaica. They must think a black face will put their guest off their food, never mind that black people did cook for and serve white people for century. It is sad that she could not find anybody like I found Clifford, who see the black but also the skill.

  Claudette startle, must be from a dream. Her breast heavy with milk that her baby should be drinking so she grateful to come home from work and feed Glorie. Still, she mutter about how she fed up and have to get up and work, get up when pickney wake, get up and get up and get up, and she think about them all the time and send people to check on we during the daytime when she at work, and if we want more than just fry fish and dumplin she have to cook enough to eat dinner then overnight food for the next day; she is tired, and no mother should have to lift brick seven months after giving birth. Once Glorie quiet on her breast, she say:

  “I don’t know how long I can live like this, Norman.”

  Normally, we speak patois together and try to speak good English outside the home, so I don’t know why she is addressing me in this way.

  “Like what?” I say.

  Her voice turn to me across the darkness.

  “I’m tired, Norman. Woman don’t get the same money as man. I can’t look after you, look after the children and work two job, when I fear every minute somebody will come knock down the door and take cosh to we head. I can’t cope with the worry in my brain.”

  “But it won’t stay this way,” I say.

  “What is going to change and when?”

  She and her mother have been writing letters to each other. Claudette want to prove to her mother she made the right decision but it is hard. She was always her mother’s favourite. The middle daughter. The prettiest, the lightest skin. The one she expected would marry a good middle-class Jamaican man, an accountant or some other professional, not a field hand. It is difficult for her to show her mother she made the right choice when her life has turned out like this. I understand, but nothing was supposed to happen this way. My mother did write to me too. On very nice paper, to tell me to come home Norman. Come me look after you. Claudette have to read it out to me, and she don’t like it, but now, maybe, she think that might be for the best.

  “Soon, love. Soon we will settle as a family. It take time. Remember when we first start court and your mother did against me, but she soon see that I am a good man and love her daughter more than anything? We both know that the longer time go on, that everybody who try to stop we would change their mind, and let us be together and free. We both know that the longer that time go on, the better we adapt to our way of life.”

  She kiss her teeth, and laugh.

  “I don’t want to get better at suffering, Norman. I want to be happy. Me pray day and night and still we nuh see light!”

  “A me nuh see light. You can see everything good.”

  Glorie little mouth suck nipple. I wonder if she can understand that her mother is in pain.

  “Mek we go back a Jamaica,” I say. “If you cyah happy de yah, mek we go back home. You nuh miss the banana, that nuh taste the same when them ship across the world? The breadfruit, the cassava, the mango? We nuh say we fail. We say we get the experience and done.”

  She don’t say anything again. When Glorie asleep and down, she come back to bed, and I try to cuddle her up and love her but she push me away and slap me off. She get up and leave me to lie down with Robert, in his little bed.

  * * *

  —

  I tell Grime I want thirty per cent of the takings. He come back by me after we stop for lunch, and say, Deal.

  * * *

  Hot weather training on Saturday with Grime in his shirtsleeve, on the common. We lunge with bar and sprint up and down. My muscle remember how to box more than my eye. I feel where is the pad before I see it, and I hit it clean every time, till one time he stop but continue to count out loud in the same rhythm, and I thrash forward and almost throw myself to the ground.

  “Real power, aggression and instinct,” Grime say. But I hear him take off one pad. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Four,” I say, and laugh.

  “And now?”

  “Ah. Six?”

  He did silent a moment.

  “Am ya blind, Norman?”

  Of course, it cross my mind that my eye not as good as they use to be, but to hear that word from somebody else mouth, I could have dead from stroke on the spot. To hear it from a stranger, somebody who don’t know me, somebody who need me to be at my best so we can make money, somebody who not even teasing me or trying to bring me down, it did shock me right in my heart. I have to accept now that the condition of my eye bad, that I have to see a doctor. Grime one of my boss, too. My boss can see that I can’t see good and work on his factory floor, with heavy and dangerous machine that need to be operate by somebody with good eye.

  “We’ll finish here for today,” he say. “I’ll see you in work on Monday.”

  I win the first fight in a straight knockout, but the second one start and the headache lurch and I feel weak, and just as I open my mouth to retire the Trini man lick me down. I work through the winter with the headache but one day, in May, one alarm did start ring inside my head like the air raid siren in a war film. I drop the spade, lie down and beg somebody to bring me water. The sun come out bright, bright after the rain.

  “A rainbow! Two rainbows!” McCarthy shout.

  * * *

  —

  Robert and Glorie watching television. The curtain are draw. My head still hurt, but I must start cook soon. Claudette will be home from work; it must be gone five. Every time I get up to cook I am afraid to drop hot oil on my children head.

  Three month now, I don’t work. The doctor we see tell me that I get the headache, and my eyesight spoil…because I am too tall, because it is a different kind of sunlight in England.

  “Daddy a laugh!” Robert say when I slap down me hand on my leg.

  “Lord, if me nuh laugh, me wi’ cry,” I say to him.

  He must already think his daddy mad. But tell me what the doctor go to big English school such a long time for to chat so much rubbish? More than one hour I wait for less than five minute. They don’t even check my eye properly. Claudette smile in her white glove and hat and say, Yes Doctor, yes Doctor, like she fear to inconvenience them. For some reason I can’t talk. Plenty rest, they say, give me prescription for Panadol, tell me to stay out the light and to see one optician.

  I still don’t know how they can conclude, with all their big education, that a man born and raised in Jamaica can fraid a the lickle chink a light a come out the cloud a Englan’!

  What a way the boy don’t know his own business and ask me question about what I am laughing about every minute.

  “Watch Mother Rabbit Family or
I turn it off and listen classical music!”

  You have your whole life ahead of you fe listen, bwai. Mek your eye eat nuff now case dem nuh hungry again.

  A cruel God it is that stop me to see my beautiful children and the rose I plant to his salvation.

  “Daddy, you a cry?”

  This boy.

  “Robert, what you want to watch? Wheh Glorie deh?”

  “Nuh worry, Daddy, she asleep.”

  My little man come up to hold his hand around mine like a priest and rest his head between my leg. I pick him up and stroke his cheek, nose, lip and eye, for I can’t bother to try to look on his face good again. If you can’t see, you must feel.

  * * *

  —

  “Me read in the paper them fret bout mussi forty thousand West Indian already make the trip a Englan’ fe live,” say Laury, when he and Maurice come by my house one evening after I stop work. “But me also read that Englan’ have population quite up to fifty million. Fifty million rahtid Englishman did win world war and them bawl bout lickle forty t’ousand black man in them yard! More German them deh yah than we! Cha!”

  “Sometime if me deh pon bus top deck through the town centre me lucky if me see one black face mid all the sea a white,” say Maurice. “How that one black face them cyah ev’n find room fa fe take over, eeh? Tell me that! Me give them mi raasclaat for take over!”

  “You nuh worry them a go say you ah live off yuh woman?” say Laury, to me.

  “No, sah. People say that don’t know me and Claudette.”

  “You going through the war, man,” say Maurice. “Me sorry for you. Nobody nuh have it easy. Plenty worry a trouble black man ya so. Look wha happen last night with the black man a London. From Antigua, them say. Him bruck fe him arm a work so him go hospital, and them bandage it up, so him a walk home to him yard when mussi five white man him never see in him raasclaat life set pon him with knife. Them kill him dead!”

  “A lie y’a lie,” I say.

  “No sah, me nuh lie! Them tab him up an lef’ him pon the pavement fe dead!”

  “Lord Jesus! Wha’ make man bad so?” say Laury.

  “Them bad, yes! And them a riot, black man against teddy bwai white, tab up each other nuh the road with car burn and shop loot. Rahtid! We nuh come a Englan’ fe dis!”

  “May he rest in peace,” I say.

  “Kelso Cochrane, him name,” say Maurice.

  Doreen did in the kitchen with Claudette. Even though I am blind I know Doreen not right. She don’t hug me the way she did usually. When they gone Claudette tell me that Doreen got a black eye and say it was an accident at work. And Claudette too lovely for the botheration these badmind man she have to work with subject her to. She come home the other night to tell me she push a trolley onto one ward to wash the sick man face, and even as she reach them, with a big smile, one of them say to one other one, I don’t trust these darkies. They’ll steal the milk out your tea if you take your eyes off ’em, and they laugh. Even as she put the rag in the water to squeeze it, she did feel the strength withdraw from her hand as if her blood did turn to lead, but she bite her lip and wash the man face round, and he fidget and resist, but she do what she need do to this man, wheel back out the trolley, and soon as she leave the ward she drop down on her knee and cry. That is not the Claudette I know; the back-a-yard Claudette I know would take her nail, scratch corner in the man forrid and peel off his face, make him feel every nerve tear from his skin. So hard she work, with two job, then she have to deal with these badmind man talking rubbish to her, casual like she is deaf and can’t read lip.

  They rub your hair and your skin to see if the black might come off. They say your hair like Brillo pad. Woman come from the West Indies for Pride and find Prejudice. No good morning, no good evening. Keep Britain White, they all say. We are a colony of stray cat at everybody gate, creep up in their house when they left their door open, to tuck up in their bed, sometime, as Maurice like to, with their wife. Darkie. The look they give. They say we smell. Or they don’t tell we, they tell each other, because we put oil in we hair and cream we face against the British element, the element of the northern hemisphere, where the sun don’t hardly shine but make me blind, where the people turn their back against we island. We surround. We feel like criminal. We feel like foreigner, not like British citizen. We feel like the headache.

  I am a black man. A tall, big, strong black man. In slave time, I would fetch a lot of money, because of my ability to work, my eye, my mind, my obedience, my consciousness, my fertility, my desire for peace, to be happy, to keep everybody happy. Take away just one component, and what is he worth? Nothing. I am a back. I am a mule to load with sacks of sand. I should be out there at work, not sitting at home, stepping careful around two small children I can’t see. Four children. How I did get four children? How is the mother of two of them out at work, and the other two the other side of the world, a call another man Daddy? How I did get so far from home? When was the last time I did read a book, or even one newspaper article? Why I did not go to college? Why I did not go to the University of the West Indies? Why I did not fight more to get an education? Why I did leave Henry? Why, oh why, does black man die?

  * * *

  —

  Robert head on my chest, like he is asleep, and he don’t answer me again. So my children both asleep leaving me to watch their kiddy show and I can’t even get up to switch off the television. But now I can cry, because I love them so. But I don’t feel good at all. I don’t like this world. I can’t go to church when God make me humiliate so, when he give me so much hope to bring up my children in a better place, only to take way the tool I did need to make that life for them. Lahd God. Merciless. Like Bedasse a seh, Depression gwine guh kill me dead!

  GREAT BRIDGE

  Chapter 1

  AUGUST 2, 2002

  He got off the 35 at Brixton station and waited at the same stop for the number 3. Two evangelists, both mic’ed up, competed with each other over dub basslines at the station’s mouth. Facing it, a bespectacled, middle-aged man in a white shirt and high-waisted black trousers said the words “sex before marriage” into his headset. Closer to Jesse, accompanied by a wheeled amp, a woman dressed completely in white from her synthetic hair to her Doc Marten boots was screaming, Jesus died for you! into her mic, pointing right into the faces of startled passers-by. A group of black girls with iron-straight weaves, crop tops and combats passed her in silence with their lips around McDonald’s straws. Crowds of white people dressed in leather, skinny black denim and band T-shirts, some carrying pint glasses and bottles, were dispersing onto buses and into takeaways. A police car waited until it had crept into Jesse’s personal space before deploying its siren, making him jump and swear before it escaped through the traffic. Men with dreadlocks stuffed into yellow, red and green knitted hats sold posters of black legends and incense from trestle tables. The smells of skunk, Southern-fried chicken, raw meat, fresh fish, green bananas and yams commingled in the cooling air, while debris from the day’s market trade littered the gutters. A tall boy with thick lips and a durag crossed near and muttered the word skunk into his ear, but the number 3 came and Jesse jumped straight on it.

  He sat at a window seat two forward from the back, not directly in front of the sleeping man in the black hoodie threatening to spill the lager from his can. The chaos of Brixton Road soon gave way to quieter neighbourhoods. A couple of stops in, three young people sharing a bottle of rosé—a blonde, a brunette, and a tanned boy, perhaps his age or a year or two older—threw themselves around him, in front and beside, and continued their conversation as if he wasn’t there.

  I just wouldn’t mind doing a day trip somewhere, you know what I mean? I wouldn’t have to spend loads of money just like, you know. When we went last year…/ What, to Brighton? / We just sat on the beach and got pissed and it was a really lovely afternoon. / Summer in Berlin�
��s so nice though. / We’ve got a roof terrace now. So we don’t have to mix with all and sundry. There’s chairs out there, a bit fucked but we’re gonna have to get some new stuff. We were thinking of just getting some fold-up stuff…/ There’s a big storage thing in the middle of our flat. / It might be getting a tad extreme. / Where can you store turf? If you can find me some turf…/ On the roof and roll it out like a big garden, or you can get fake stuff. / You don’t want to irritate the neighbours. / She’s looking to move out by the end of the month. I doubt she’ll have time to sort it. / What, this month? You’d have to meet the person first. / When are you moving in?

  Jesse looked down out of the window, at a drunk man pissing under an archway next to a closed garden centre, wondering what these perfect white people must be thinking about him and whether it was obvious he was rent on his way to have sex with a client. Might they be able to smell it on him? He was apprehensive; he’d been advertising for a couple of months now and the good clients already seemed to be drying up. He cringed, thinking about his most recent, “Dave,” who answered the door of his Bayswater flat, sweating and out of breath, in a very tight pair of white Adidas shorts with green trim, a studded leather collar and dirty white socks. The smile dropped from his face; Jesse could see in his eyes that he was high.

  “I thought you were tall,” “Dave” had said, looking Jesse up and down as he stepped out of his doorway to let him in.

  It was explicit on Jesse’s Gaydar profile that his height was five feet eight, and his recent pictures were not deceptive in showing him to be of slim build. Jesse had quickly learned that sometimes, when these men see black skin, they believe King Kong’s coming to see to them.