by Jacob Ross
As she moved down the shop, two or three steps led down into a narrowing space, and by the time she reached the back of the shop, the typewriters were grazing her sides, announcing her presence by a series of keys tapping paperless surfaces.
The old man behind the cash register peered at her typewriter through his circular glasses.
“A popular brand back in my day,” he said. It was no problem replacing the ribbon, and she should do the same with some of the keys. “The obvious ones,” he said, pointing to the gaps. “But also, I think your ‘H’ is loose, and your ‘I’, yes, your ‘I’ is definitely at risk of falling out.”
He found the letters and fitted them. He replaced the ribbon, rolled in a sheet of paper, and typed a stream of letters. The taps now met with beautiful seriffed characters on the page.
“You’re all set,” he said, and charged her far less than she’d imagined. She picked up the typewriter and, cradling it under her arm, made her way home.
She set it on her desk, loaded it and pressed a key. Tap. Then another. Tap. And again. Tap. Soon her fingers were moving along the keys like a pianist’s and the taps of the letters hitting the sheet of paper became like the beating of her heart. As her heartbeat grew faster, so did the rhythm of the typewriter. Before she knew it she had reached the end of the page. She pulled the sheet out of the roller mouth. As if awakening from a dream, she looked at it for the first time.
Gibberish. A stream of letters that meant nothing at all.
What had she written? Where had she been, she wondered, while her hands were moving across the typewriter?
She didn’t think of it again until her mother came across the typewritten paper two days later,
“Darling, this is incredible,” she said, with the sheet in her hand. “I can’t believe you remember so well. Why didn’t you tell me, you silly?” When her mother starting reading out the text on the sheet, the girl recognised the language of her grandmother and of her childhood.
“Ma, I didn’t write that.”
“Who wrote it then?”
“Well, I wrote it, but in a dream. I don’t even understand half the words.”
“You do remember. You just don’t remember that you remember. I always told you you remembered. You should write more. It’s a beautiful story. Are you writing it for Nani?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, it’s set in the village where she grew up.”
She tried to convince her mother that it wasn’t she who’d written those words, that she didn’t know the name of the village that her grandmother had grown up in. She tried to describe how her fingers had moved across the keys of their own accord, spelling out words she’d never even learned. Her mother just smiled.
“That’s inspiration, dear. Memory and inspiration. Nani must have told you these things when you were very young. Now, keep going. How lovely these stories you tell of her childhood, of her relationship with her sister.”
That night she sat facing the typewriter. She pressed a key with some hesitation – tap. Then another. Within a few minutes she felt the same dancing of fingers as letters appeared on paper in time with the beating of her heart. Finally exhausted, she moved to her grandmother’s bed and fell asleep.
In the morning, she saw that eight sheets of paper lay next to the typewriter, all covered with text. She left them on the kitchen table and went to work. When she got back, her mother was waiting by the front door,
“Publishable!” she exclaimed, before the girl had even taken off her jacket, “definitely publishable.”
The girl imagined herself sitting in a bookshop signing copies for a long queue of fans, or being interviewed by journalists. She thought, why not?
“You liked it, Ma?” she said, affecting nonchalance. Her writer persona, she quickly decided, would be nonchalant.
“Liked it? I love it. It sounds so … real. Her marriage to your Nano Abbo, the early days, the magic of – how did you say it? Love and compromise? It’s beautiful.”
“Would you translate it for me?”
“You can translate it yourself. What is this about, child? Why do you pretend not to understand and then write so perfectly? Is it a kind of shame?”
“I’ve explained to you what it is. You don’t want to believe me.”
“Stop that nonsense now. I’ll translate it for you if you like, though I think you’d do better yourself, or just write it in English, you silly. Anyway, I do have one suggestion.”
“Tell.”
“Add some masala. Like, say something about her marriage being arranged, or the story of Nano Abbo falling off the horse. Do you remember that one? They like reading about things like that.”
“We’ll see, Ma.”
“And the chickens …”
“There’s chickens?”
“Well there might as well not be. You make it sound as if it’s perfectly normal for young girls to have pet chickens. Describe the chickens.”
“Describe the chickens?”
“Describe the chickens. And put cows in there. And camels? You think you can get away with a camel?”
That night, once again, fingers moved across the keys. She didn’t even look at them. Instead she looked out the window at rain-coated people going into their homes. She saw them through their windows, making dinner or watching TV. She watched their lights switch off for the night. Soon, even the trees and the pavements disappeared into darkness.
She woke up the next morning with at least two dozen sheets of filled paper lying next to her. She felt like she hadn’t slept better in months.
She came back from work that evening feeling an urge to once again sit at the typewriter. She was climbing the stairs towards her new study when she heard her name. She turned around. Her mother walked slowly towards her. Her hair was dishevelled and her eyes bloodshot. She opened her mouth to say something but then, it seemed, she couldn’t decide what.
“Ma, what’s wrong?” The girl reached for her mother’s hands, and noticed that she was clutching a sheaf of papers.
“Who told you this?”
“Told me what?”
“These fucking lies.”
She’d never heard her mother swear before.
“OK, Ma, listen to me. I don’t know what it says.”
“You and her, you were always against me. Making up these things. When did she tell you these things?” Tears fell down her mother’s face. She pushed the girl out of her way and went into the study. She picked up the typewriter, and held it in the air.
“Why would you do this to me?”
“Put it down, Ma.”
Her mother flung the machine across the room with a strength the girl didn’t know she had. It hit the wall. The platen rolled across the floor, the silver wheel bounced onto the windowsill, and keys went in every direction. The letter D hit the girl in the chest. The metallic blue body lay dented and broken on the floor.
“Ma, what’s wrong with you?” Her mother sat huddled on the floor, her face in her hands, crying like a child.
“Ma, I’m sorry.”
“How did you know?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know I knew.”
Her mother tried to speak but choked on her words and once again burst into tears.
The girl gathered the scattered parts of the typewriter and heaped them in the middle of the room. She half-expected, when she woke up the next morning on her grandmother’s bed, to find the machine magically restored. It wasn’t, and her mother wasn’t able to look her in the eyes as she gave her breakfast that morning.
While she sat eating her eggs, the girl wondered what had been written on those pages. She had the strange feeling that if she thought about it, she could guess, or remember that thing that nobody was supposed to know.
JACQUELINE CROOKS
SKINNING-UP
Riley stepped outside the shebeen. Steam was coming off her body. She pulled the grey rabbit-skin jacket around her. Her brown face was bloodless
, leeched by the airless underground club.
Five o’clock in the morning and she’d had enough of the dub and skanking.
“Where yuh goin?” someone from a group of men called out. “The party ain’t done.”
The men were squinched together like quabs. Their silk shirts opened way down on their chests, like the cold was nuthn’, like it wasn’t biting their raas.
“My bed’s waiting for me,” Riley shouted back at them.
“Baby-love, my bed’s waiting for you,” one of them called out. The men laughed.
“Yeah, yeah,” Riley said as she waved away their laughter. She could hear them siss-i-sissing behind her as she walked away, but she didn’t business. If she didn’t step she wouldn’t get back before Tutus woke up and realised her younger sister had taken her fur.
More importantly, Riley had to get home before Mumma who was working nights at the old people’s home at the back of the estate. Mumma didn’t know she was bustin’ out of the house at night, going to blues parties and dutty shebeens; but it was only a matter of time before she found out. Mumma was cunning like that.
Riley crossed the road to the minicab office. She didn’t have any money – never did. No matter, it was just one long walk up the Cemetery Road – twenty minutes max. She walked past the minicab office – the last sign of life – and turned onto the long dark road that wound past the cemetery on one side, rundown houses and wasteland on the other. In fifteen minutes she would reach the patch of frowsy grass that tried to pass for a park.
She walked for five minutes.
The street lamps drip-fed bile-coloured light into the darkness.
She felt like a stix-gyal in the fur jacket, badn’raas. Invincible. Not like that fool-fool Barry. He’d collected her that evening, driven her to the shebeen, promised to take her home.
Inside the club he pulled her to dance, winding and grinding against her, rubbing his sweaty face against her cheek. She shook him off. Left him rubbing-up with some ugly bug-eyed gyal. Chaa! She didn’t business bout his dry-arse self and his mash-up car. She just wanted to get home and climb into bed with Crimpey, her little brother. His curled-up body was always warm, sweat dotted around his scalp and down his spine.
She heard steps behind her. She stopped and turned.
It was Glendon.
Six-foot four, slit-eyed Glendon who didn’t skin-up with women or men. Every now and then he pulled a gyal off the streets and into his car. If the gyal was lucky he released her within a day or two. With or without her baggy.
Every now and then he jooked-up a youth with his blade.
Riley’s joints stiffened, but her brain was working hard. “Yeah, w’happen, Glendon. Yuh come to walk me home, eh?”
Glendon kept slow-skip-skanking towards her.
“Looking out for me, Glendon, thanks,” Riley said. Her voice was turning speakey-spokey. Don’t lose it, she told herself. Play it real or you’re in trouble.
“What’s up, Baby,” Glendon said. “Where you goin’?” He stopped a little way behind her.
“Back to my yard,” Riley replied.
“Forget that. Come back to my yard; mek we have a likkle drink an’ t’ing. You know dem ways.”
“Nah, man – gotta step before my Mumma gets up.”
“Don’t carry on them ways, Babe.” The slitty eyes flickered in his long dark face.
“Know what, Glendon, I appreciate you walking me home like this. It’s kinda scary walking past the cemetery this time o’ night. Nevah know what’s going on back there.” She stopped walking.
Glendon looked over the cemetery wall. He looked back at her, and Riley could see he was unsure. Yes! She’d dropped the image right inna his head.
“Big-big man like you ain’t scared of no duppies,” Riley said. “You’ve come to take care of me, make sure I get home safe, ain’t you. I check for that.”
He stroked his chin like he was thinking about something deep.
Riley wasn’t sure how long she could carry on the skank. Everybody knew that Glendon couldn’t read or write. His parents left him in Jamaica when they first came over. The people he’d been left with worked him like a mule and he never went to school.
She carried on walking and he followed.
“Yuh look kinda cold,” he said. “You know what I got at my yard?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Come on, guess. Something every gyal wants.”
“It could be anything. Just tell me.” She was trying to keep her tone light, friendly. “Come nuh, man, what you doing walking behind me like that. How you gonna guard me if you ain’t by my side?” She didn’t like the way he was walking behind, like he was tracking her.
“A fur coat,” he said. “That’s what I got. Black mink. Know how much that thing cost? Couple grand. Gyal like you shouldn’t be wearing no rabbit. You betta dan dat.”
“Sounds crisp,” Riley said.
“Crisp? It’s more than crisp. It’s hanging in my cupboard, waiting for you.”
Riley didn’t want to think bout no black fur coat in Glendon’s cupboard. She walked faster.
“Hold up nuh, Baby. Why you stepping so quick?”
He caught up with her, pulled her wrist so that she was facing him.
“I could come over next week,” Riley said. “I’m bleached, I don’t wanna come to your yard like this. I ain’t fresh.”
“I don’t check for freshness. I like things a likkle renk.” He put his arm across her shoulder. She could smell his sex, it clung to the back of her throat. She wanted to spit. But she swallowed it down.
“You’re fit, you know dat,” Glendon said.
“You’re fit too, like a sprinter or something.”
“Not that kinda fit – gwaan like you don’t know what I’m talking bout,” Glendon said.
She had to try something else: “You believe in duppies?” Riley asked.
He splayed his fingers around the back of her neck like a brace. “I don’t believe in dem fuckries!”
Riley knew he believed in duppies. People who said they didn’t believe were just trying to protect themselves.
“My aunt Ermeldine is an obeah woman,” Riley said. “Big time obeah woman. She brought all her sorcery with her when she came to this country. Everyone else brought bangarang. She knew what she needed in this town.”
“Are you for real?” Glendon asked her.
Riley took hold of the arm that was around her shoulders and moved it away; she linked her arm through his. Wasn’t that how rich people linked and walked; people who lived good, knew how to behave.
She couldn’t out-run Glendon, she had to wrong-foot him.
Skank him.
His arm stiffened. Her arms and legs were trembling. She looked at him from the corner of her eye. He had the same bush features as her grandfather Poppa-Landell: thick lips, wide nose, mallet-arms.
Glendon was like all the migrants from this slum town, living underground. Carving out their lives from darkness. But Poppa-Landell had used his strength to work his way up, to get to the surface. Glendon was lost, working his way deeper and deeper down.
Darkness was his territory.
Sweet him, she had to sweet him up.
“Nice scarf, Glendon. Burberry?”
“You know dat.”
“You always look crisp – you must be doin’ alright.”
“I’m not gonna bust my raas like my Mumma, cleaning shit for shillings. Cho! You gotta tek it.” He swiped the air, grabbed a fist of darkness and flung it into her face.
Riley flinched, steadied herself. “Your Mumma live round here?” Her voice was drying up.
“The only place you should be thinking about is my yard and that fur coat that’s waiting for you.” His tone was harder now. They were getting close to the turn off for Hunt Road, close to her house.
He wasn’t gonna let her go much further. She blinked, hoping that she would find herself back in her paraffin-heated bedroom. Why had Mumma come to this countr
y? Why hadn’t she stayed in Roaring River, married some bush man who did nothing but dig up yams from the rusty earth.
A fur coat, to raas. Glendon was after her skin.
They came to the large wrought iron gate, the main entrance to the cemetery. The other entrance was on the northern side, close to the old people’s home where Mumma worked. Riley thought of her in the old people’s home, pulling sheets up to the chins of old white people with cracked, powdery faces.
She thought of Aunt Ermeldine summoning duppies, fleshless, boneless spirits.
“What the raas is that?” Glendon shouted.
Through the gates Riley saw a small figure moving through the cemetery, not walking on the path, but cutting inbetween the gravestones, the shorter route to the gate. Head down, moving quickly.
“What you done? What you done?” Glendon shouted and he stood away from her.
The figure came through the gate.
“Pickney, where yuh goin’ this time a de night?” it shouted.
Glendon flexed his arms a little way from his sides.
“You t’ink I don’t know you been crawlin’ out at night like some dutty man?” the figure bawled.
Riley realised that Mumma had been taking the short cut home through the cemetery, even though she’d told them all never to go that way – day or night.
“I’m gonna bus’ you raas when I get yuh backside home, yuh hear,” her Mumma shouted.
Riley didn’t answer. She could see her Mumma wasn’t really vex.
Her Mumma was standing between her and Glendon as she grabbed a fistful of her rabbit fur collar and dragged her closer, without looking at Glendon.