The Sugar Planter's Daughter

by Sharon Maas

  ‘But why, Yoyo? Why did you do it? I don’t understand why.’

  ‘Because he loves you. He loves you so much. And nobody loves me.’

  And she burst into tears again.

  Yoyo stayed at my bedside all afternoon. We talked. It was the longest conversation we had ever had, and the deepest. It was a conversation that equalised us; she repentant, I forgiving, we reached out for each other in a way we had never done before. Because never had there been such necessity, never such pain between us, never such a mountain to climb. But we climbed it, hand in hand. Yoyo, I discovered, had depths I had never imagined; once she had left the shallow shores of personal pride and ventured into the risky waters of introspection and self-examination she began to find her feet and, even, to revel in honesty, and in confession.

  ‘I envied you, Winnie. I did. You were always so mature and Mama loved you more.’

  ‘Oh, but she didn’t, Yoyo! She really didn’t. She and I are very much alike but when you were small you were Mama’s pride and joy – so clever, so quick, so pretty! I remember when I was about six and you were four how jealous I was of you because you could speak so quickly and so well, and I had to mull over every word, and I stuttered a bit, and you would make people laugh because you were so witty, and Mama used to delight in the things you said and nobody ever laughed at what I said – I was the boring one and you, everyone doted on you, including Mama!’

  ‘But you could speak German, fluently, with Mama. You read German books with her, poetry and novels, and sang those boring Schubert Lieder, in German! And you played the violin and she loved that you were musical. And the two of you would play duets and it was as if you were one entity, lost in your music, and I didn’t understand music and I was just about tone deaf’

  ‘Just like Papa! You were Papa’s little girl and I envied you so much! Every girl wants to be Papa’s darling and I wasn’t, I definitely wasn’t. You were prettier and wittier so he loved you more – I swear you learned to flirt with Papa!’

  She blushed. ‘Maybe I did,’ she admitted. ‘It’s true I had Papa twisted round my little finger. But look where Papa ended up.’ She stopped to reflect. ‘And now it’s Mama who has brought us together at last. It was touch and go, you know. I nearly didn’t make it. My pride, Winnie. Pride is such a terrible thing. And envy. I envied you so much! You had everything I wanted. A husband who loves you. Sons. Those are the things I want. And up to now I always got what I wanted, but I couldn’t get those. It made me so furious! I like to be in control, you know, and if I’m not I get angry and do stupid things. And for the first time in my life I wasn’t in control. It was as if my pride was behind me with a whip, spurring me on to do things I knew were naughty, and I just didn’t care. I wanted what I wanted and nothing else mattered. Pride is not a good master! It’s led me into the most terrible messes in the past, but this is by far the worst.’

  She chuckled. ‘The seven deadly sins. Remember Pastor Pearson’s sermons? How he used to go on about them! Vainglory is my worst, I think. Wrath. Envy.’

  ‘Lust?’ That seemed to me the most obvious in this case, but she shook her head. ‘Not in my case. Actually, I used the lust of others to get my own way – so, greed more than lust.’ She looked at me mournfully. ‘I didn’t really want George, Winnie. I didn’t lust after him. It was more a game – more to see if I could win him, somehow. I so envied the way he loves you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You have Clarence. You have a husband of your own. Why don’t you try to love him? Doesn’t he love you?’

  ‘Hah! Clarence? You must be joking, right? Don’t you remember how we joked about Clarence when he first came to BG? And you thought I was mad to marry him. You don’t really think there’s love in my marriage, do you? It’s a marriage of convenience. I told you that long ago.’

  ‘I know. I’m just confused. You always said you didn’t want love, you didn’t believe in love; it’s all romantic nonsense. And yet’

  ‘And yet, seeing the way George looks at you… well, it did something to me. It made me jealous. I couldn’t help it. But – but what I did was unforgivable.’

  ‘I – I think I can forgive you, Yoyo. You’re my sister. Of course I can forgive you.’

  ‘You must forgive him too, Winnie. You must go to him and tell him that he is forgiven. Please. Go to him.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Today?’

  I nodded. ‘You promise?’

  I nodded again. Her voice was small and humble.

  ‘Another thing, Winnie.’ She stopped and started again. ‘I know that the worst of it all is your baby and I can’t bring her back and it’s all my fault. I will always feel terrible about that. I know you can’t ever forgive me.’

  ‘But I do, Yoyo. I know you didn’t mean for me to fall. It’s – it’s just a consequence; it wasn’t deliberate. I don’t think we should be pointing fingers of blame here. I’m not going to.’

  ‘Still I want you to forgive me. Say it, Winnie.’

  I wanted to tell her that she had to forgive herself. That she had lost herself for a while but now she had found her way back to who she truly was; that there was no value in looking backwards to that lost person but that she must stay here, in the present, the new Yoyo right here holding my hand and looking at me with pleading eyes, begging for absolution. I knew she wanted to hear certain words from me and so I spoke them, and I meant them with all my heart.

  ‘Yes, Yoyo, I forgive you.’

  She was silent for a while, and then: ‘Thank you, Winnie.’

  I opened my arms and she fell into them, and I lay back on my pillow and she lay with me, and so we lay together and I fell asleep, and when I woke up again she was gone, and I knew I had to go to George.

  32

  George

  Winnie came back to me that night. We were having dinner in the cramped hallway at the cramped table, Ma and Pa and Mama and me and the bigger boys; and suddenly she was there, standing in the doorway. I leapt to my feet and rushed to her and only then I remembered, and stopped.

  But she held out her arms to me.

  ‘Winnie, I’ I began, but she put her fingers to her lips and she said, ‘Shush, George,’ and so I said nothing but only stepped into those arms and they closed around me.

  ‘Yoyo told me everything,’ she whispered into my ear, and if I had not known before that I had the best woman in the world, well, in that moment I knew it.

  She let go of me and drew away and stooped down and held out her arms again and the boys rushed forward into them. Ma got up to fetch another plate and filled it with cook-up rice and chicken and we all sat down at the table again and it was as if nothing had happened, almost; and even the great sadness that hung over us all seemed banished for the evening.

  But it wasn’t. That night when the boys were in bed and Winnie and I were at last alone we wept together. We wept for our Gabriella Rose, the little girl who had hovered for a while at the periphery of our lives and then was swept away, it seemed, on the breath of God. She was gone, and in the vacuum left by her departure Winnie and I filled spaces in each other’s souls, and in each other’s bodies, and we were one as we had never been before.

  Later, much later, I told her about the property in Lamaha Street and the house that would be our home.

  ‘The vendors have sorted out their problems,’ I told Winnie. ‘The loan was approved. Today I signed the papers. The place is ours.’

  ‘As long as we are together,’ she whispered to me through the darkness, ‘I don’t care where we live.’

  ‘How can you still love me, after all of this?’ I still couldn’t believe it. I did not deserve her love. How could she forgive the ultimate betrayal?

  ‘George,’ she said slowly then. ‘I do love you and always will. But…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But – I don’t know. I’m trying to find the words.’

  In her hesitation I knew there was something serious she had to
say; that she knew very well what she had to say, but was afraid to say it.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s just – well. You’ve changed, George, over the years. You’re no longer…’

  She paused again. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it thumping away in there: thumpity thumpity thump. I feared what she would say next.

  ‘No longer the George I fell in love with. The passionate strong fighter, the man who would change history. The man who wanted to avenge his best friend. Do you remember what you told me, George, after the trial?’

  ‘I told you many things!’

  ‘No, but those few words stuck with me. You said: This is bigger than both of us, Winnie. Bigger than our little personal lives. Bigger than our love. And you know, those are the words, more than anything else, that bound me to you. That made me give up all I had, to come to you. You were so strong, so determined! You were my hero.’

  ‘But that was then, Winnie. Now we have children. Now we have to live in reality. I can’t be that reckless revolutionary and still be a good father and husband. That’s something for single men. I have to care for you. I can’t’

  She hugged me, snuggled into me. ‘You’re the best husband any woman could want, the best father. It’s just – perhaps a bit too much? You put me on a pedestal, George, and that’s not right. When I came into your life you were so young and so full of drive for something marvellous – you were going to change history! You and all the others. And I loved and admired that – yes, I fell in love with you, the person, but there was something behind you, just like you say – something bigger than both of us and our little romance and that is what is missing in our lives. I remember that first rally I went to, on the Sea Wall – do you remember? When the police came afterwards and you didn’t know I was there and you were so cross and swept me up into your arms and hid me in a boat and commanded me to stay put! Oh, that was marvellous, George! That was the real George! And I bet you, I bet you anything, that that George wouldn’t have been seduced by Yoyo! You’d have sent her packing! Because it was big, George, so big! And when we first married it was the same. The Saturday rallies! The moment you began to speak, I’d feel a thrill all down my spine, and when you sang, oh, my heart melted! You had the gift of moving crowds, George. Inspiring people. You would leap into their hearts and make them want to do good things, brave things. And then you gave it all up because you wanted to be a good husband and father!’

  ‘Being a good husband and father isn’t wrong! It’s important.’

  ‘Of course it is! But I don’t see why the one has to exclude the other. Look, when I committed to you I also committed to that, to your work. I told you, didn’t I? I’d be right there at your side. It was bigger than both of us and we’d work together. It’s what I wanted, George – it’s what I still want!’

  ‘You mean – I should go back? Go back to the rallies, go back to being Theo X?’

  ‘Maybe not – maybe Theo X, that hot-headed young man, can be put to rest. But you can still inspire, George, and you should. It’s your God-given gift. You shouldn’t give it up for me. Maybe you can just be George – speak to them, sing to them. They need it!’

  I’d never known Winnie to talk so much. I listened, and as she spoke something began to grow in my heart. Just a tiny sprout, or a flicker, of light – a spark. I watched that spark, and felt it grow in strength, like a tiny flame fanned. Every word she spoke was like a breath of air that fanned that little flame. I could feel it, deep inside, gaining strength and confidence. And as I watched it I knew that she was right. It was the thing I had lost, my essence. Lost it under the weight of responsibilities. But it wasn’t lost! There it was again, eager to grow, straining back into life. I took a deep breath. Yes! There it was again! Strong and full of courage and upright and invincible. The real me.

  33

  Ruth

  I am no longer needed in Georgetown; tomorrow I return to Promised Land. Winnie’s story is intriguing, and I must see for myself. Yoyo, contrite and confessing and begging for forgiveness? It seems an impossible thing, a miracle. Can a person change overnight, into the very opposite of her former self? But then, maybe it is not so much a change Yoyo must have gone through today at the hospital; rather a shedding of her not-self, a removal of a cloak of iniquity.

  I do believe in the inherent goodness of all people. That we are all born good – are not all children sweet and innocent, until they learn the crooked ways of adults? Are we not drawn to that innocence in children, because we know that it is in ourselves as well? That we all wear cloaks of not-self, distorting that inherent goodness? Applied to Yoyo, this means that she was desperately unhappy because she saw and felt only her own dark cloak, a cloak of envy and selfishness, distorting her inherent goodness and blinding her to it. She has asked for forgiveness, and been granted it. Is this a new beginning? Will a new Yoyo await me when I go back to Promised Land? I hardly dare hope.

  I need not have worried. The Yoyo who received me when I arrived home was a transformed person: a fresh-faced shiny-eyed angel of a daughter. Gone, the complaining grump finding fault with every little detail of plantation life. Even Jim noticed the change, and remarked on it. Jim, of course, knew the whole story, had seen it in its infant stages, and now that Yoyo had confessed, Winnie knew the truth and George was absolved, we were finally able to discuss it.

  ‘That Christmas Eve, suddenly George was standing at my gate and asking for a bed,’ Jim told me. ‘He was trembling, a wreck, and he stammered out a story about Yoyo in his room, naked. Must have been a sight to behold! Poor George!’

  I chuckled. ‘Some men might say, lucky George! What a titbit placed in his hand!’

  Jim laughed too, and his belly shook. ‘Not our George! He must have leapt out of his skin and hightailed it over to me: “What shall I do, what shall I do?” Well, what could I say? “That girl is trouble, George!” I told him. “Better to stay away!”’

  ‘And he did – for years,’ I said. ‘But I suppose it still bristled somewhere deep inside. The things we bury have a way of surfacing when we least expect it.’

  ‘It’ll have bristled in Yoyo too – she won’t accept defeat. I bet she’s planned this for years.’

  ‘You think so, Jim? You think it wasn’t just an opportunity she grasped? That it wasn’t spontaneous, but planned?’

  Even as I spoke the words I knew they were true. Yoyo was just not the type to humbly accept defeat. That’s what made her such an excellent businesswoman, capable of seeing through even the most difficult decisions to the end. But socially, it made her hard and unyielding and, in this case, had led to disaster.

  And now, as I write this down, I’m beginning to believe that disaster is just what she needed; that disaster was the only thing that could wake her up and bring about change. A warmer, softer Yoyo – I have seen that new side to her today, and I can only hope it lasts.

  Three months later.

  Rereading those last words I can say this much: Yes, it has lasted, more or less. Yoyo is making an enormous effort. She is kinder to the labourers, and she gets along with Jim at last. She tends to be as close-lipped as ever towards me, though – I think she has still not really forgiven me for deserting her as a child. That will take some more work; but I am hopeful. Of late especially she has been particularly gay, almost sparkling; and today I found out the reason.

  This morning she drove off in the car, but didn’t say where she was going. She was gone all morning; I wondered if she had gone to town – if so, it would be the first time since the hullabaloo with George. None of them have seen each other again, and rightly so. It will take some time before we can be a normal family again, even with the change in Yoyo and the peace she has made with Winnie.

  As the sun reached its zenith and began to descend and Yoyo had still not returned, I began to worry. If she had indeed been going to town surely she would have told me? Perhaps she had gone only to New Amsterdam – but what business could she have th
ere that would have taken so long? My great fear, of course, is always that she might have an accident. Yoyo drives too quickly, and she is reckless. A stray dog running into the street, a child chasing a ball, a donkey cart in her way – all kinds of hazards waited for her on the narrow coastal road.

  But finally, at just past five, I heard the roar of the motor and the crunch of wheels on gravel and I breathed a sigh of relief – she was back. I watched from the window as she handed the car keys over for Harold to bring the car round to the garage, and walked towards the front stairs.

  No, she didn’t walk. She skipped, she danced, she twirled – this was a happy Yoyo coming up the stairs! I opened the front door for her and she leapt into my arms.

  ‘Oh, Mama, Mama!’ she cried, and tried to swing me round in a clumsy polka. ‘Mama! At last, at last! Mama, I’m going to have a baby!’

  I froze and stared, stunned into silence. It had been plain for years that marital relations between Yoyo and Clarence had ceased completely; it was there for all to see. Not just that they slept in separate rooms; it was their coldness to each other, and Clarence’s blatant and undisguised preference for African and Indian labourers, his own employees. Girls he could master, and who bore his children. He had at least three such bastards; he acknowledged them and supported their mothers, and made no secret of it. Yoyo’s baby had to be from George.

  I can’t say the thought had not occurred to me before – and obviously I had hoped that there would be no such consequences. But I assumed she had taken precautions, seeing as it was a planned encounter, and since she would certainly not risk bearing George’s child. It seemed obvious. But this! This joy, this elation! It was a mockery of everything; a mockery of George, of Winnie, of her so-called confession, her so-called repentance.