Closure

by Jacob Ross

  By the time she stood in front of him, his smile had slipped into the bitter twist that she remembered well.

  “Dollo, you get fat,” he said, his eyes travelling from her face to her feet. She looked down at her widening ankles and soft black shoes deformed by bunions.

  “I hope you not going to feed me up so I get fat like you.”

  He passed her the handle of his old-fashioned, army-green suitcase. His hands, free now, rested on the space where his firm belly used to be. “You see I like to keep myself fit and trim for the ladies and I don’t want you messing with that.”

  He laughed briefly before stalking off, clicking his way through the airport. She watched him walk confidently in the wrong direction, noting that his body was, in fact, eating itself up from the inside. She glanced down at her own fleshy bosom.

  *

  “It ain’t ready yet?”

  She jumps, turns to find him standing behind her by the kitchen table.

  “Almost,” she says, turning back to the stove.

  “This here England making you dotish. It’s already 8.30. If you’d stayed back home you’d be getting up with the cock. But I forget. Ain’t no cock here to wake you.”

  She waits for him to finish chuckling over his own joke.

  *

  The hunger and the heat had left her weak and listless that day. She’d been hiding under the house from the sun, throwing stones at the chickens and watching them dash about, hoping to find grain only to peck at hard grit. Just then his shiny shoes and sharp-seamed trousers (pressed by her sister Jackie, no doubt) appeared. He bent over until his head was upside down, and smiled. It was like the sun had come to rest under the house.

  “Want some mauby and rock cake?”

  Her body twitched with the promise of sweet raisins wrapped around dense dough, washed down by the bittersweet drink.

  “Go fetch me some and I’ll give you a piece.”

  *

  “What time the doctor calling?”

  He is sitting straight-backed at the table, his hands worrying the handles of the knife and fork in front of him. Earlier this week, when she pretended her back was turned, she noticed him repeat this gesture a few times – a shaky worrying of the hands. She had learned to never completely turn her back on Dick even though she made it appear as if she did. She had perfected this as a child, along with a quick surreptitious glance that, in a split second, registered all pertinent facts and potential dangers. Both came in handy when keeping a secret watch on her ex-husband, Eric. That’s how she first noticed Dick’s shaking hands as he picked up the graduation photo of her son, George, from the cabinet shelf.

  “He look like his father.”

  She had paused, the heels of her palms sunk into the soft dough, which was refusing to firm up despite her aching triceps.

  “A good looking boy.”

  He sighed happily before slipping into a satisfied laugh and replacing the frame back in the wrong spot. He stretched and sauntered toward the living room door.

  “He didn’t get any of you, did he?”

  She lifted the dough and slammed it hard on the tabletop as the door closed behind him. She marched the breath through her nose until the rise and fall of her chest evened out and her head swam with air. Slowly she pivoted forward, until her forehead rested on the floury tabletop.

  *

  She holds the little brown nutmeg to her nose, smelling the musky fertileness of the Caribbean, before grating soft flakes from the aromatic seed into the pan.

  “This morning they said…”

  “I bet you hoping they give me the all-clear so you can send me home.”

  She turns sharply to find him watching her with amusement. Slowly, she carries on her stirring.

  *

  The rich brown earth whirred beneath her bare feet as she hurried down the sunbaked path to Miss Molly’s. She’d speeded up, imagining the first mouthful of rock cake and mauby filling her mouth. She’d take a bite and then swill any leftover space with the ice-cool drink. She’d hold onto each mouthful for as long as she could, chewing thirty-three times like Mother instructed, until the sweet and bitter mixture ran down her throat all by itself.

  Hands on hips, Miss Molly smiled as she panted up the yard.

  “You a mad dog or an Englishman or what?”

  It was the first time she had heard that phrase. She’d seen a mad dog once before, down by Barraouallie Beach. It was spinning on itself, white froth spurting from its mouth but she couldn’t imagine a red-cheeked Santa look-a-like behaving that way.

  In the shadow of the doorway overhang, sweat ran down her face and the front and back of her dress. She waited a second so the words wouldn’t pile into each other.

  “I come for Dick mauby and rock cake, Miss Molly.”

  Miss Molly raised her eyebrows and pushed up her bottom lip at the same time.

  “Eh henh,” she said, shuffling into the shadows of her kitchen. “He must be pleased with himself to treat himself so.”

  She returned with the pitcher of mauby and a large paper bag in her hands. Dollo had to clench and unclench her fists to stop from grabbing them from Miss Molly’s soft, dimpled fingers. Miss Molly held the bag and the jug toward her but, as the girl reached forward, she pulled back half an inch.

  “He going give you some for coming all this way?” Miss Molly gave her a suspicious look.

  “Of course.”

  How dare Miss Molly doubt her brother so – he being a policeman-in-training and as tall and graceful as he was? Dollo folded her arms in a gesture of solidarity with her brother and raised her chin defiantly at Miss Molly.

  “Well, that all right then,” she said and handed over the treats. The girl could hardly remember dropping the money into Miss Molly’s hand before she was at the bottom of the lane, her eyes fixed on the mauby in the pitcher.

  *

  “You going to stir that chocolate tea to death?”

  The chocolate tea is thick and stewy. Her stomach churns at the thought of so rich a taste so early in the morning. She can no longer smell the citrus from her own cup of Earl Grey turned cold on the sideboard.

  *

  Dick was sitting on the veranda when she returned. He looked like an ice pop, his crisp white shirt perfectly ironed and his hem hovering above his ankles. His face was not even shiny, the shelter of the veranda keeping him cool. By the time she reached the bottom step, the heat was making her tremble.

  He held out his hands without leaning forward so she had to walk right up to him and place the sweating pitcher and the bag in his hands. He took them with a tug.

  She had imagined it in such detail that, as he took that first bite of cake and swig of mauby, she closed her eyes. She opened them to see crumbs escape his mouth and a stray raisin roll under his seat.

  His jaw worked as he broke the cake up in his mouth and she watched the first few gulps of mauby bullet down his throat. She shivered as a damp itch crawled over her skin, and the empty hole in her stomach threatened to swallow her up.

  The bites he took were large. Two, and already half the cake was gone. His Adam’s apple rose and fell underneath the pitcher bottom – one, two, three, four, five, six times. When the pitcher came down, it was almost empty.

  Her chest was tightening, so she had to breathe quickly around it. He didn’t even look at her as he took the third bite, the last piece of cake crumbling into his hand. With the other, he picked up the pitcher and, before tipping it back, smiled at her. More crumbs fell to the floor and the panic rose to her throat. Before she could stop herself she’d said it.

  “Dick, give me some, nah?”

  *

  The cup of chocolate tea is on the placemat in front of him. But still she stands there holding the hot pan. It is heavy. She can feel the warmth of the handle through the tea towel.

  She looks down on him just like that other time. This time his hands aren’t smooth and long but gnarled and twisted, the top of his fingers bending
away from the inflamed knuckles. She notices the black hair dye spilling into his bald patch as he brings the shaking cup to his lips. He takes a long, slow slurp. There’s a second of quiet and then half a gulp before the rest is sprayed out onto the plastic tablecloth she’d bought especially for his visit.

  “Jesus Lord! You trying to poison me?”

  He looks up at her, but the challenge in his eyes has gone and all that’s left is the urge in her fingertips. She bounces the heavy, steaming pan in her hand twice.

  *

  He was looking deep into the pitcher as if whatever he had to consider lay in the bottom. There were wet smiley mauby marks on either side of his lips. His long pink tongue slowly wiped them away. It was while she was imagining the taste of mauby on skin that, without looking up, he slowly held out the pitcher toward her. She hesitated for a moment then reached out.

  Before she could touch the cool sweating sides of the pitcher he jerked his elbow, launching the remainder of the juice into her face. The splash took away her breath and blinded her, leaving her gasping. Long after he had gone and the mauby had dripped and dried on her chin, she remained on that spot, trying to put a name to the part of her that had dribbled away beneath the floorboards.

  *

  The telephone is vibrating, it’s face lighting up with each ring.

  They stare at it for five rings before looking at each other. She keeps her eyes on his as she places the hot pot on the table and answers the phone. As she listens to the doctor’s even voice, she continues to stare into Dick’s pleading eyes while breathing in the pungent smell of burning plastic.

  In the taxi, on the way to the airport, they sit next to each other on the back seat, their eyes trained out of opposite windows. Only for a moment does she look down into his lap. With shaky hands, he is threading the warm scarf that she bought him.

  “When Mother was sick, she was in a lot of pain you know,” he says, his head turned away from her. “We sat with her all through the night and she cried out. One piece of bawling. Like she was coming into the world not going out.”

  The car jolts as it turns into the airport, jostling into the right lane for the terminal.

  “It make you realise.”

  She looks at his hands threading and rethreading the scarf.

  “What did it make you realise?”

  “That, in the end, all dem things that we hold onto just disappear. Gone. It’s like we are born again.”

  *

  They wait silently in the check-in queue. She can see over the top of his head. At the desk he can’t hear the agent properly so she makes sure he has an aisle seat not far from the toilet and that his diabetic meal has been ordered.

  At the departure gates she hangs back.

  “You ain’t coming?”

  She shakes her head. “No. I can’t go no further.”

  He looks confused, his eyes not focusing on anything in particular. His arms hang awkwardly by his side. Around him excited holidaymakers with their newly highlighted hair and Day-Glo clothes grab goodbye hugs and blow kisses.

  She places her bag on the floor and walks toward him. She holds out her arms and there is an involuntary spasm of his shoulders, an extraordinary passing of electricity that lights his eyes. She bends forward, drops her hands on his shoulders and slides them slowly down his back. The tiny wings of his shoulder blades and the marbles of his spine feel fragile and she imagines them skinless – bleached and bare. She feels him stiffen beneath her fingers and then, with a tiny crack like the splitting of a wishbone, a minuscule part of him lets go. She holds him like this for a while, like he is her son and she is leaving him at the school gates.

  VALDA JACKSON

  AN AGE OF REASON (COMING HERE)

  The Father

  It’s not really money you know, weh make me come here. No, I didn’t come here just for that. It’s the baby body buried in your granny’s yard. I couldn’ live there with it. And I didn’t have anywhere else to take you all.

  You don’t remember Michael. No, you couldn’t remember him. You was just baby yourself when he die. You didn’t even have your second birthday yet.

  I couldn’t stay there. I just couldn’t stay. But your mother never want to leave her mother’s yard – they were real close – and if it wasn’t for the baby grave, I could stay there as well, for her mother was a lovely lovely woman. And she was real real good to us.

  You know, I move all over Jamaica before I end up in St Thomas. Although is St Ann where I born, and I live in a whole heap of other places as well, I feel St Thomas is my real home because nowhere else did I feel as welcome and as happy as I did there.

  And it’s there I meet your mother.

  When I first meet her… I tell you, Julie, I couldn’ believe my luck.

  From the first time we meet, I know I have to marry her.

  She was going to market for her mother. Another time after that she was coming back from town.

  We talk for just a little while and I tell her that I really like her ways, and I would like to see her again. She tell me that if I want to see her, I have to come to her house and meet her mother and the rest of the family as well.

  You know, your mother never really walk up and down.

  She never go a dance, nor walk and chat. Mm mm.

  She always stay at home and help her mother.

  Your mother was a serious Christian. I could see that.

  She was just eighteen when we meet.

  She take me to her mother. And I tell you, that woman, Mistress Catherine, you couldn’ find any better than she. She was so lovely.

  It was just few weeks after May and I meet that I talk to her mother. I say, “Mistress Catherine, I’m real serious about your daughter, and if I have your blessing, and if she will have me, I going to ask her to marry me.”

  It’s not that I really asking permission of her, you know, for I believed that she would give it. But I wanted to have her full blessing.

  And also… I never want her to think that I would take advantage of her as a widow-woman, having no man there to protect her and her daughters. Because nuff-nuff man was ready in them times to mash up young girls and then walk away. And she was a good good mother to me as well.

  You know I was orphaned when I was a small boy; I never know anyone to call mother. But you see, Julie, when I meet your mother, it’s not just wife I find. I find a mother as well. Her mother was a real mother for me.

  So you see, I was happy at your granny’s yard. She was good to us… but I know we couldn’t live there forever. We did have a plan that when we save enough money we would buy piece a land down a Yallahs and build a little house and plant it up. But you know something? With that little grave in Mama’s yard… I really couldn’t stay there any longer.

  I just couldn’t stay.

  They have advertisement all over, telling people to come to England to work.

  So… I tell your mother I want to go there and work. And you know, we believed we could save even quicker to get that piece of land. I tell her it would be better if we leave you girls with Mama and go together but she say she can’t leave you and your sisters them. I beg her come with me.

  Even her mother pleading with her. Even Mama say we must go together and leave you all with her because she can take care of the three of you.

  And I would trust her. I would trust that woman with my life. I know that she would do her very best for unnu girls.

  But May, she say no… she not leaving you all. She wouldn’t come.

  She never want to leave her children.

  She wouldn’ come.

  So, I leave St Thomas on my own.

  Just as I come.

  I used to write your mother. And you know my writing not so good, for when my mother die I have to stop going to school. But I write anyway, for I miss her. I miss all of you.

  I feel it, yu see.

  I really feel it.

  I tell you Julie, it wasn’t easy leaving you all behind…
and without your mother as well.

  It was hard… them times… I really want her with me.

  Chu… them times were tough.

  Tough tough.

  Sarah, First Born

  I don’t remember having a childhood after Mummy left. When she left, that was the end of being a child for me.

  I never played. I was too busy looking out for us.

  It was after Michael died.

  I bet you don’t remember when Michael died, do you?

  But I do.

  It was awful.

  I think I was five.

  I just remember. Mummy suddenly calling out to her mother: “Mama. Mama. The baby dead.” Mama came running in from the kitchen.

  I can still see Mama trying to hold Mummy up… and the crying, I still hear it sometimes. You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?

  Wish I could forget.

  It wasn’t long after that Daddy left.

  And then when she left to join him that was it for me.

  The end of freedom.

  The end of play.

  I mean – we weren’t protected, Julia.

  There was no one really looking after us.

  At that time, remember, Mama still had three of her own teenage children living at home. Of course Aunty G was supposed to be helping with us, but I don’t think she was even fourteen then.

  Then there were other cousins living with us as well because two of Mummy’s older sisters had already gone to England, and Mama was looking after their children as well. So she had the three of us – you, Elaine and me – and our cousins Maureen and Collette and there was Sherrie and Millicent, and Aunty Enid’s boys, and Aunty Evelyn’s as well. There must have been more than eight or nine of us grandchildren all below the age of eight. I’m not even counting those older boys. She couldn’t manage so many; no matter how much she loved us. It’s not possible.

  I could see that, and I was five.

  Elaine was just four and you were only two. I felt I had to look after the two of you… and you, you weren’t easy. They had to tear you off me every morning so I could go to school, and then I’d come home and find you damp and tetchy, just rocking and banging your head against Mama’s kitchen wall. It’s a miracle you have any sense left… though sometimes, Julia, I do wonder.