by Kerry Young
‘How come you no pay me no mind with the message I send you?’
‘I here nuh?’
‘And it take you all this long time to come see me after I done talk to that bwoy of yours weeks ago?’
I think to myself you rough up my bwoy and frighten him half to death. So maybe that your idea of a joke but it don’t mean I owe you no explanation so I just say, ‘I here now so tell me what you want.’
‘That bwoy of yours busy following me all night and all day he is driving chickens and cigarettes all over town. And apart from it all being stolen goods you and me both know that bwoy not got no driving licence.’
‘Driving licence! Is that what you worried ’bout?’ And I just throw my head back and laugh. ‘I can’t believe you drive all the way over here to talk to me ’bout Milton driving licence. You really telling me yu not got nothing better to do than that?’
‘I can throw his arse in jail, yu know. And yours as well with all this navy liquor and gambling and whore houses yu running.’
‘My arse in jail? And what going happen to your arse when I get through telling everything I know ’bout you and them bwoys you taking down the alley? Whose arse you think they going be interested in then?’
Clifton start play with the beer bottle turning it round in his hand like he studying every inch of the label. Then he say, ‘It don’t have to be like this, yu know. We have a opportunity here to help each other.’
I look at him and I think to myself OK he got a point because us helping each other was what this was all about in the first place anyway. That was why I set Milton on his tail to get some leverage. So what it matter if it him making me a offer instead of the other way round? Sun Tzu say, ‘ When the envoys speak in apologetic terms the enemy wishes a respite .’
So I say to him, ‘If it was anybody else but me catch you with that bwoy in that alley that night they would have cut off your cock and beat you so bad they would have leave you for dead.’
But he don’t say nothing.
I sit back and look at him because it suddenly dawn on me what a hard life Clifton making for himself and what a dangerous place Jamaica is for a man like him.
‘So what you want to do, Clifton?’
And he lay out his terms, what protection he providing, how much cut he want, and I say yes because it all seem reasonable enough. But what I realise is that all Clifton really want is to be with some people who know what he is and not looking to knife him over it. Clifton lonely and him buying himself some friends. So I say to him to forget ’bout the beer and I tell the barman to bring us a bottle of Appleton.
By the time I leave the Blue Lagoon I was feeling good. Good enough to want to go to Chinatown and see if I could pick up something to make Fay feel better. Because although she stop crying well over six months now all I hear from Ma is how Fay moody and lazy. And how she just sit still and silent and won’t do nothing to help out. Not that she is there in Matthews Lane that much because in truth Fay spend half her time up in New Kingston running back to her papa’s house any time she fancy. But Ma don’t care ’bout all that. All Ma tell me is how Fay idle, she won’t fry a few fritters or pick the duck feathers for the pillows. She won’t even do a bit of cooking. Nothing. According to Ma, Fay still waiting for some housemaid to make her bed and tidy up the place, and put the food on the table in front of her, and clear up when she finish eat because her whole life Fay never even do so much as pick up a chopstick, not even to feed herself, because Miss Cicely always have them use a knife and fork, English style. Fay don’t even know how to pick up the rice bowl. And I know this bit is true because I see her every day outta the corner of my eye staring at me like she would rather starve to death than put the bowl to her mouth. It get so bad I had to go buy a fork, just the one, so now she can sit there dainty taking all night to eat a bowl of rice.
Ma say Fay try to get Miss Tilly run ’round after her but she, Ma, put a stop to that: ‘Tilly here to help me make a living not play maid to you.’ That is what she tell Fay. So now Fay don’t even bother to say good morning or good evening to Tilly because, to her, Tilly don’t exist.
I say to Ma that maybe she could try talk to Fay, in English because she don’t seem to understand that Fay Chinese not too good.
‘Me talk English? She no Chinese girl? She talk Chinese.’
And I say, ‘No, Ma. You talk English plenty good enough when you talking to Tilly. Just try do the same thing with Fay.’
But Ma not doing it. She clicking and clucking with her tongue and she crashing ’round the kitchen complaining ’bout Fay all the time but never a word will she say to Fay unless it outta some sort of spite.
I say to Fay maybe she can try do something with Ma.
‘Do you have a suggestion?’
‘I dunno, Fay. What do women do together? There must be something you can do? Maybe you go shopping or you show her how to arrange the flowers in the vase so nice like you do?’
Fay just sit there and look at me and I know exactly what she thinking because I can’t see Ma going shopping with her neither, and as far as flower arranging I think my mother would sooner chop up the flowers and cook them.
‘Well maybe you can try wash a few pots or something.’
So I am standing in the shop and it is a jade ring that catch my eye. Dark green jade sitting on a 22-carat-gold band, and I buy it. I have them wrap the box in some soft green tissue paper and put a bow on it. And even though this is not the first time I try sweeten Fay with something like this I feel uplifted. That maybe this time I might manage to get something she find some favour with because I think she really been trying her best to get along in the house with Ma and I know it not easy.
All the way back to Matthews Lane there is a spring in my step, with this jade ring in my pocket rubbing against my thigh feeling like a nice shiny big red apple for the teacher. Not that I know anything ’bout apples and teachers but I seen enough American movies to know how good it feel when you got a thing like that you going give to somebody.
But when I get back to Matthews Lane Fay not there, Ma say she gone back to her father’s. And I don’t know why, but this time I just see red. Maybe it was because the ring was sitting there in my pocket. And I just run out the house and jump in the car.
All the time I am driving with my hand down on the horn I can see in my mind’s eye the signs on the highway that say ‘Undertakers Love Overtakers’. Even when I hit Cross Roads I just ignore the sign that say ‘Careful Drivers Stop at Red Lights’ and just press my foot on the gas and keep going. When I get to Lady Musgrave Road I turn into the driveway so fast I can smell the rubber the tyres is leaving on the road.
But it is just the same thing. The housemaid Ethyl come out to tell me that Fay not there. She gone out with her sister Daphne. I think Ethyl feel sorry for me just standing there like that because she tell me to sit down on the veranda and offer to bring me a glass of lemonade. But it is not lemonade I want, so she bring me a glass of Appleton.
She put the glass down on the table next to me and say, ‘Miss Fay and Miss Daphne most likely gone out to celebrate about the baby.’ Well it was a good job I was already sitting down because otherwise I would have fall down. I look at Ethyl and I can see she think that maybe she say something outta turn, so she run inside without saying another word.
When I come round it was dark and I could smell the evening scent off the angel trumpet. But I know I not been sleeping all this while because there is three empty glasses on the table next to me. Then I hear a car door slam and the next thing Henry Wong is coming up the veranda steps. His tall, square frame look tired and weary. When he see me sitting there he take a hand and brush the greying hair back off his forehead and then he come and sit down next to me. Him take my hand in his. Gentle like.
‘Is my fault,’ him say to me. ‘You think you good father. Give children everything they want. But maybe it not so good. Maybe they just grow up good for nothing. Fay not bad girl. She just spoil.’
I was looking at him and wondering how come he manage to live in a house full of women like this.
‘Fay tell me ’bout Matthews Lane, how the house small and how you got no help. And I tell her you are a young man, just making your way. When business get better you will move her to a better house, get some help, make things good. She just need to have some patience. When I married her mother I was just a young man like you. Just got the one shop, but when business get better, everything get better. Patience, Pao, that is what it takes. That is what I tell Fay, that she has to stay with you and have patience. Anyway, I tell her, it better to be downtown with your own people. Better than living up here in this desert like me.’
‘Did Miss Cicely keep running back to her father every other week as well?’
‘No, that was a different situation.’ And then him look sorta sad and pause for a minute. ‘Women are not like men, Pao, they change with the wind. That is why we men have to steady ourselves. Make a firm anchor with a good business and work hard.’ Then he stop and think a minute. And then he say, ‘You go home now. You don’t want to be having no talk with Fay at this time of night and with everything else,’ him sort of motioning towards the empty glasses. ‘Tomorrow is plenty time to sort things out.’
The next morning when I go up to the house, Fay already come and gone again. Ethyl look sheepish when she have to tell me but she still look sorry for me. So I say to her, ‘Ethyl, you know where my shop is down West Street?’
‘Yes, Mr Philip.’
‘Next time you get a day off come see me will you?’ And she agree to do it the next week Wednesday.
Then just as I start to leave Fay and Daphne turn up. Daphne fussing ’round Fay because Fay her older sister and she know she got to show respect. But it also because Daphne plain and everybody get taken with Fay like they don’t even know Daphne is there. Daphne used to being invisible.
So I get outta the car and stand up in front of Fay in the driveway. She look truculent like she going just kiss her teeth and walk inside. But she don’t, she just stand up there with her hand on her hip while Daphne go inside the house.
‘What you doing here, Pao?’
‘What you doing here, Fay?’
‘This is my home.’
‘No, this is your papa’s home. Your home is with me, downtown in Matthews Lane.’ And then she do exactly what I think, she kiss her teeth and walk off. I follow her up the steps on to the veranda.
‘You got no business here, you know.’
‘You is my business. A wife supposed to stay with her husband, not making a fool outta him every week running back to her papa.’
‘Is that what you are worried about, me making a fool out of you? Well don’t fuss yourself about that. You are making a fine job of it yourself.’
And she start to walk inside so I grab her hand to pull her back, but she just jerk it away from me and start yelling like she want to wise up the whole neighbourhood to what she have to say to me.
‘Take your hand off me. Who do you think you are, grabbing after me like that? You are not downtown now with your little whores and hoodlums. You are in a respectable place and you need to act like it.’
‘You think this is respectable, you and me bawling at each other right out here on the veranda?’
‘You should be the last person on this earth to talk about what is respectable. If you weren’t so pathetic you would make me laugh.’
Well that make me mad. I just fix her with a stare cold as ice and she stop because I think she remember who she was talking to. So she calm down and I say to her, ‘Is it true you pregnant?’ But she don’t want to answer me, so I have to ask her again.
‘Is it true you pregnant?’
But she still don’t say nothing so I take a deep breath and I fix her with my eyes and I say to her, ‘Remember you are a Catholic.’
And just then I put my hand in my pocket and I feel the box still sitting there. So I pull it out and I hold it out to her. She look at it there in my hand, and then she look at me in the face.
‘Take it.’
‘What is it?’
‘Take it and see.’ So she reach out and take it from me.
‘Go on, open it.’
She unwrap the bow and tear off the paper. When she open the box she just stare at the ring. And then she reach inside the box with her right hand and pick it up. And she raise up her arm, and swing, and throw the ring into the yard.
‘That would be the companion piece to the jade necklace you bought for your whore in East Kingston.’ She look at me. ‘You think I didn’t know?’ And then she just walk inside and close the door, which was the first time I even seen that door shut.
Three days later she come back to Matthews Lane, most likely after her papa tell her to. But she don’t say nothing to me ’bout the baby or the ring or anything else. And I don’t say nothing to her.
When Ethyl come see me the next week she bring me back the ring she fetch outta the flower bed.
‘I think you might want this back.’
And she hand it to me in the box she must have pick up off the veranda. I take it from her and say thank you and put it in my pocket.
Ethyl is young. She want something more than being down on her knees scrubbing the Wongs’ mahogany floor, and picking up after Fay and Daphne, and their little brother Kenneth who Miss Cicely produce long after everybody think she past her time.
Ethyl is looking to better herself. So I tell her I will pay for her to learn shorthand and typing on her day off, and buy a little typewriter and all the books she need so she can practise. And pay for the examination when the time come. And she is happy with that. So that is our secret, because if Miss Cicely catch wind of all of this she will fire Ethyl just like that. Maids are twenty a penny for a person like Miss Cicely in a place like Jamaica.
Ethyl come to see me every week after that and she bring me the news from Lady Musgrave Road. This is a good arrangement because just like Sun Tzu say, the thirteenth principle of the art of war is the employment of secret agents.
‘ What is called “foreknowledge” cannot be elicited from spirits, nor from gods, nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations. It must be obtained from men who know the enemy situation. ’
13
Offensive Strategy
The next time I see Gloria I take the ring with me because Fay is right, it will look good next to the necklace that Gloria keep lock up in a box at the back of her wardrobe and only get out on special occasions. But the ring she want put on straight away. It fit her like it was bought for her. So she straighten it on her finger and stretch out her arm to admire how gracious it look pon her hand. It suit her. Really and truly. The thing make her skin look rich and succulent. And she so pleased with it I think maybe it mean something more to her than it do to me. So I don’t bother say nothing ’bout Fay and all her antics and carrying on. Not that Gloria want to hear anything ’bout Fay because that was the one condition Gloria had after I get married. She didn’t want to hear nothing ’bout Fay. We was just going to carry on act like Fay didn’t even exist because being married to Fay didn’t change nothing between me and Gloria. I still pick up the money from her. I still giving her protection. I still drinking Lipton’s Yellow Label tea with her. I still seeing her three times a week. I still talking to her ’bout things because Gloria is the only person who ever care to listen to me talk ’bout myself and what this life mean to me.
Then she say to me, ‘I have something to tell you.’
And I say, ‘What?’
And she say, ‘I going to have a baby.’ Well I just reach out and find the arm of a chair to steady myself, and I sit down because it feel like me knees going buckle under me.
‘So how long you know this?’
‘Last week. Well I think two months gone already. I just wanted to be sure.’ I can tell Gloria don’t know what kinda face to put on. She don’t know whether to look happy or worried or vexed because she don�
�t know how I am going take the news. And truth is I don’t know either.
So I say, ‘What you going do?’
And she say, ‘How you mean?’
‘What you going do with it?’
‘You mean get rid of it?’
‘No. I mean what you want to do? You want to keep it or what?’
‘What you want to do?’ And she look at me now like she scared what the answer going be.
‘It not got nothing to do with me, Gloria. Is not my baby, is yours.’
‘You no know it take two people to make a baby?’
‘You saying it mine? How you so sure?’
She just stand there and look at me. Then she say, ‘OK, if you want say the baby not yours then fine. I will go about my business and sort this out myself.’
‘I’m not saying that, Gloria. I just surprised that’s all. If you say the baby mine then it mine. But it not for me to decide ’bout it. It not going change my life like it going change yours.’ And that is when her face soften, because she could see that I was really giving her a choice. And it was almost like she never thought I would take it that way. Actually just give her the choice like that.
So I say to her, ‘I am good with whatever you want to do. But if you decide to have it you going have to let me look after you better than this place.’ And I just look ’round the room the way it decorate for entertaining men and she knew exactly what I mean. ‘Long time now I been wanting you to stop all this anyway, but sure as eggs is eggs this ain’t no business for a pregnant woman.’
And she laugh and say, ‘Some men come on strong with a pregnant woman.’
‘Not on top of my son.’
‘Who say it going be a boy? Maybe it be a girl. Maybe she become the first woman prime minister of Jamaica.’
‘Maybe.’
After that Gloria start look for a different place to live. She and her sister Marcia going all over Kingston, but truth is I have my heart set on some place in Barbican. It new, it clean, it good neighbourhood. But I don’t say nothing to Gloria because if I say Barbican she going move to Mona Heights. She don’t like me telling her nothing. She say I not got no right, especially after I decide to go marry somebody else. But in the end there was no need to worry. Gloria and Marcia find a nice three-bedroom place, two bathroom, nice tidy yard right up there in Barbican.