Black Water

by Louise Doughty

  ‘The coloureds have had a terrible time over here,’ Anika said, ‘you know that too, the prejudice against them is just awful. You know what it’s like in the South, don’t you? Michael’s father is a lawyer, gets people out of jail. Imagine, a lawyer. You any idea how unusual that is? Mind you I can’t say there’s much sign of Michael himself following suit.’ She became still for a moment. Then brightened again. ‘He was in the army you know, Michael, he was a GI. He fought for our freedom, well, in France, not our Homeland but it was the same thing. Lots of his friends were killed. He was so brave. Anyway, I have another surprise for you.’

  Harper had learned over the years that surprises from his mother were not always pleasant ones. He remembered her saying before they left the Homeland, ‘I have a surprise for you, baby boy, we’re going to live in America and you’re going to get a lot of new friends.’ They had been in America for eight months now, moved four times during that period to various tiny apartments, each one a little worse than the last. Sometimes she had worked for a bit, sometimes she had taken in typing and did it on a small but very heavy typewriter that he had had to lug from one boarding house to another. He had had two different schools with a long break between and the new friends had yet to materialise.

  ‘Maria isn’t coming tonight.’

  He felt a clutch of fear. ‘Who’s going to look after me?’ Please let it not be the old man across the hallway who stank of beer and stared at him, stubble-faced and moist-lipped, whenever they passed him on the stairwell. Maria was a plump teenager downstairs who gave him some of her Junior Mints as long as he didn’t tell his mother that she hung out of the window and smoked while she was out. He had neglected to mention that his mother didn’t bother with the window when she smoked in case the Junior Mints dried up. He’d been wondering how many times Maria would have to babysit before he could drop a hint regarding Liquorice Laces.

  ‘I’m not leaving you tonight, you’re coming with me, you’re going to meet Michael, that’s why I warned you he was coloured and ironed your shirt this morning.’ She pointed to where his clean shirt was hanging on the front of the wardrobe door. ‘We are going on a bus and a trolley car. We are going to Michael’s house and we are going to meet his father, the lawyer, and his father’s, well, whatever she is, and then they are going to look after you while Michael takes me out. Now what do you think about that?’

  It was a Saturday and he thought how he and his mother had been together all day – he had watched her iron the shirt on a towel spread out on the floor this morning and had asked her what she was doing. She had known this information at that time but had withheld it from him so that she could ‘surprise’ him. Why did adults do that? Was it something about wanting to prove they were in charge? He tried to process the list of events she had just outlined but it was too much information in one go. He was going out with his mother, that was good: he hated it when she went out without him. They were going on a trolley car together, that would be fun. He would have to put his new shirt on – that was bad. It was too big for him, he could see that just by looking at it. He was going to meet a coloured man and his parents. Would the parents be strict or nice? Would they give him any supper and if so, what would it consist of? Did they have a dog? He longed to play with a dog. His mother would leave him there, in a strange house. That was not good at all. For how long?

  They caught a bus, then a Red Car, then waited for more than half an hour at another bus stop before Anika approached a man in a trilby hat who took them to a different stop around the corner and said, ‘You sure this address is right, young lady?’ as he looked at the piece of paper she had shown him, a crease of concern on his face. Anika patted her forehead with her embroidered hankie before tucking it back inside the edge of her glove and smiling up at the man, saying, ‘Why yes, sir, I’m quite sure, but thank you so much for your assistance.’ Harper wondered if that meant they were going to an area like the run-down tenement block where their boarding house was but instead, when they got off the final bus, they found themselves in the middle of a grid of streets with individual houses, the pastel-coloured paint on them a little shabby-looking, it was true, but big places with steps leading up to verandas and porches.

  Black people sat on the porches, some elderly women in chairs, talking, knitting or shelling peas. Girls played skipping games in front of the houses. Nobody paid Harper or his mother any attention as they walked up the hill, but for one old lady who watched them as they passed with her fingers still flicking over her embroidery job as though they worked all on their own whether she paid attention or not.

  Harper and Anika held hands as they walked up the steep incline to number 2246, set back a little and with a huge cactus plant growing in the front. A vine of some sort corkscrewed around the porch support. The front door was freshly painted in a shiny cream colour. ‘Well . . .’ his mother murmured approvingly.

  Michael was sitting on the top step but rose as they approached – and kept on rising. He was immensely tall it seemed, with rangy shoulders and close-cut hair. He was dressed in baggy pants with an immaculate crease and a shirt buttoned up to the neck with long points to the collar. A jacket was folded neatly over the veranda balcony.

  Harper and his mother stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up at Michael, the tall man standing above them. Harper’s mother lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun – she had lost her sunglasses the previous week and had cried bitterly that she couldn’t possibly afford another pair, not with a child to feed.

  Michael looked down at Harper’s mother and then he smiled, and it was the slowest smile that Harper had ever seen, beginning with the corners of his mouth rising, as they normally did when people smiled, and then suddenly the whole of his face lifted and his eyes shone and he seemed like the nicest man in the world – less handsome, perhaps, than when his face was in repose, but a whole lot nicer. Harper glanced up at his mother who was staring up at Michael and smiling too. In their locked gazes he glimpsed a future where, yes, they lived in California and were Americans and had a house and a dog.

  ‘Hey, May-on-naise . . .’ said Michael, and shifted his gaze to Harper. ‘So this is the little guy, the one I’ve been hearing so much about?’

  ‘Nicolaas,’ murmured his mother.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ said Harper, extending his hand upwards, as high and as firm as if he was reaching for cookies on a top shelf.

  Inside the house, in a narrow hallway with another cactus-type plant in a pot, they met Michael’s parents. Michael’s father turned out to be an older version of his son – more portly, a little stooped, steel-rimmed glasses. There was a woman called Nina in a plain beige dress with hair swept up in a bun. Her status in the house wasn’t immediately apparent – he was just told to call her Nina.

  Michael’s father did not give slow smiles like his son. He regarded Harper from his great height with a stern and steady gaze.

  After the introductions were over, Anika knelt in front of Harper and smoothed his hair and said, ‘Now, Nicolaas, you are to be very, very good, the best you’ve ever been, do you understand?’

  Michael had shrugged on his jacket and turned to the mirror to shake out his sleeves and check his cuffs.

  ‘You’re going already?’ Harper said quietly.

  His mother gave a false little laugh. ‘Of course, Michael is taking me to, well, a place where they do music, it’s a kind of supper club. Now, you’ll be very well looked after.’ She hadn’t mentioned supper for him. And there was no sign of a dog. What kind of house this size didn’t have a dog?

  The woman called Nina took him by the hand and they and Michael’s father saw his mother and Michael off from the front step. As the two of them walked back down the incline, a black woman holding a little girl by the hand and walking on the other side of the street stared at Anika and Michael with a hot look and Anika lifted her chin, set her shoulders back and slipped her hand into the crook of Michael’s arm.

>   As they stepped back inside the house, Michael’s father said to him in a grave voice, ‘Now young man, in the kitchen. There is something you and I have to discuss.’

  Nina dropped Harper’s hand and went into the sitting room and he and Michael’s father walked together through to a small kitchen with windows that overlooked a short, steep backyard. Miraculously, at the bottom of the backyard, with a collar and a long rope lead that was tied to a stake, was a large white dog.

  Nina had disappeared. Harper looked about him. Michael’s father instructed him to sit at the kitchen table while he remained standing, his large arms folded and held high up above his chest.

  ‘Now young man,’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Harper replied.

  Michael’s father lifted his finger. ‘For the rest of this evening, or in fact for as long as you and I turn out to be acquainted, you will call me Poppa, you understand that?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Good. Well, there is something I need explaining to me right away before you and I can be friends. Your name is Nicolaas.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Poppa.’

  ‘Yes, Poppa.’

  ‘Good, now is it true, can it be true, that your name is Nicolaas but when they gave it you they gave you an extra a?’

  Harper pulled both lips inwards, the same way he would as if he was making an mmm . . . sound, and looked at the ceiling. Then he said, ‘I believe they did, sir.’

  ‘You believe they did?’

  ‘Yes, sir, they must have done.’

  Michael’s father shook his head from side to side, very slowly. ‘I thought as much. Well young man, there are only two rules in this house, one is that you always call me Poppa and drop that sir business and the other is,’ he turned and opened the fridge door, ‘that when Nina is out of the room, anybody who has an extra a gets to choose what flavour syrup we put in the milkshake. That understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He looked back. ‘Any questions?’

  Harper hesitated.

  ‘Don’t be shy, young man, rule number three. I just made that up on the spot on account of how it suddenly seemed to be necessary. Speak up. I didn’t get where I am without speaking up, believe me, but that’s an awfully long story and it can wait until after milkshake.’

  ‘Later, perhaps, after milkshake, after the story, would it be possible for me to go and visit the dog?’

  *

  Later, after he and the dog had made friends, there was a supper consisting of some sort of stew. The stew was placed on the table alongside dishes of vegetables and Harper folded his hands in his lap politely, waiting to be served, but his hosts put their elbows on the table, knitted their fingers and lowered their heads.

  ‘Dear Lord,’ Poppa began, ‘thank you for the gift of good food, for family and nourishment, and please Lord bless your servant Wesley A. Brown and send him Godspeed for all his sailings on those High Seas of yours and thank you of course for new guests who come into our home. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Nina, already lifting her head and reaching for the serving spoon.

  Harper sat staring at her for a minute, until she beckoned with her fingers, the spoon lifted in the other hand, ‘Come now, young man, don’t be shy, hand that plate over.’

  The stew had lumps of meat in a dark brown gravy with a strong smell that, at first, made Harper’s stomach turn. But when he put one of the lumps of meat in his mouth, it was not chewy like the meat they had had occasionally in Holland but fell apart in his mouth in soft moist pieces. Harper wondered if the strong smell and the taste of what he was chewing was what they called, over here, flavor. Throughout the meal, Poppa questioned him about his life in Holland and how it had been, coming to America that was, until Nina said gently, ‘Michael Senior . . .’

  ‘My apologies, Nicolaas, it’s a lawyer’s habit, asking people everything about their lives, drives Nina here a little crazy.’

  ‘Spreads himself thin, sometimes,’ Nina said looking down into her stew and giving a soft shake of her head. ‘Always, in fact.’

  ‘I have the same name as my son, that’s quite common here,’ Poppa said. ‘Stick to Poppa, it makes things easier.’

  ‘Michael Junior is certainly a chip off the block,’ said Nina, as she ladled a second helping onto Harper’s plate, saving him the embarrassment of asking for more. ‘In some respects, that is.’ She slipped the serving spoon into the dish of mashed orange vegetable on the table and looked at Harper and Harper felt confident enough to shake his head.

  ‘Is he like you too?’ Harper asked politely, congratulating himself on the grown-upness of the question.

  Nina glanced at Poppa and Poppa said, ‘We’re not a usual household here, Nicolaas. Michael Junior’s mother died when he was around your age. Nina came into our lives about a year later, and she’s been the best wife and mother we could have hoped for.’

  ‘Even though, legally speaking, I’m neither,’ Nina said with a smile that seemed resigned but not particularly unhappy. ‘Well, not quite yet.’

  ‘Soon, though . . .’ said Poppa firmly, looking over his glasses at her and beaming, before turning to Harper and adding, ‘Nina’s mother was from Salvador. She’s Catholic,’ as if that explained everything.

  ‘And we weren’t too sure about the father side of things when I was growing up,’ added Nina, with a half-laugh that implied this was something else that was openly discussed, amusing even.

  Harper looked from one of them to the other, amazed. This, then was the house he had come into – a house where people joked about not having fathers, where, for once, he wasn’t the odd one out because he was too brown or not brown enough and had been born in an internment camp in a country the other side of the world, a country so distant he only had his mother’s word for it that it actually existed.

  ‘The damn Japs cut my father’s head off,’ Harper announced cheerfully, keen to impress upon them that no unconventional domestic arrangements could prove shocking to him.

  A start passed between Poppa and Nina, as if they had given each other the small electric shock you get from shaking hands with someone when you’ve walked towards them across a cheap carpet. Nina raised her eyebrows at Poppa and Poppa coughed into his napkin before saying, ‘Yes, we heard that story, Nicolaas, Michael Junior told us a bit about you and your mother, and what you both endured in the Pacific.’ He coughed again. ‘But I should say, we don’t allow profanity at the kitchen table.’

  After the meal, they helped Nina clear the table, then she washed up while Poppa and he went through to the sitting room so that Poppa could show Harper certificates with his name on them that were framed and ranged along one wall. Harper began to wonder when his mother might return and it seemed Poppa and Nina might be wondering the same thing as twice during their conversations Poppa went into the kitchen and closed the door behind him and he heard the murmur of their voices. It was dark by now.

  Eventually, Nina came in and clapped her hands and said in a happy-sounding voice that he was going to stay the night. By then he was too tired to have the polite and grown-up conversation that would be necessary in order to extract more details and so allowed himself to be led upstairs to a small room with a narrow single bed against one wall and a table with a huge sewing machine and a basket full of large folded material that looked like curtains. Nina brought him a glass of milk and a T-shirt belonging to Michael Junior to sleep in and told him where the bathroom was. When she went out, she left the door ajar and the landing light on.

  ‘You know where Poppa and I are, right downstairs, need anything, you holler.’

  He was tired enough to fall asleep quickly, despite the strangeness of this arrangement, but later he woke and the landing light was still on and he could hear raised voices downstairs. He slipped his feet down and padded silently to his bedroom door. He couldn’t see anything but heard several voices in the hallway and could feel the chill of night air. One of the voices sou
nded like his mother’s but a little odd, high-pitched. Should he run down to her? Poppa was speaking to Michael then, and the two men had a brief, angry-sounding exchange. He caught the words, ‘You think this is alright? This!’ Then the front door slammed again and there was silence. He padded back to his bed and pulled the quilt over him and lay listening for a while but there were no further sounds.

  The next time he woke, it was pitch dark. He lay for a moment, confused about where he was, particularly about how comfortable the small bed he was lying on was in comparison to his cot at the end of his mother’s bed. A telephone was ringing, somewhere. There was a certain amount of rustling on the landing outside his room. He fell asleep again.

  In the morning, he woke up to full light through thin green curtains, birdsong. The house was quiet.

  Nina was in the kitchen. On the table, a place for one was laid. Outside, the dog, who had turned out to be called Jimmy, was running up and down the garden. The sun was high and bright.

  Nina smiled and gestured to the table. ‘I ate breakfast a while back but Poppa’s sleeping late so we’ll go to church this evening. He had to work in the night. It happens.’

  Harper hovered by the table, assuming the place set was for Poppa’s late breakfast, until Nina indicated with her hand that he should sit. As she poured a glass of milk for him, she said, ‘I expect you are wondering what those youngsters are up to.’ Harper nodded. Nina smiled reassuringly, but he had the feeling she wasn’t too sure of her own answer. ‘They had a good time last night. They’ll be over later.’

  He had just finished a breakfast of eggs and a bread roll when Poppa came thumping down the stairs. He burst into the kitchen, fully dressed, grabbed a roll from the basket on the table, said, ‘Morning, Nicolaas,’ and turned to go.