See Now Then

by Jamaica Kincaid

  7

  That afternoon, at exactly quarter to four, the beautiful Persephone and the young Heracles got off the school bus and found that their mother, the dear Mrs. Sweet, was not waiting to pick them up. They saw the school bus, driven by the madly named Mr. Strange, disappear around the corner below the Bennington Monument; they saw their companions, some wayward boys and girls who lived in villages that were surrounded by evergreens of every kind except for broadleaf, and the evergreens were all sick with a blight of rust; and these companions were very bad, for sometimes the boys among them pummeled the young Heracles almost to death, and the discipline he required to restrain himself from gathering them up altogether in his large brown hands and making them as lifeless as his old socks was greater than the force he had used to smite the entire city of Thebes as it appeared in his handheld Nintendo game; those boys in any case had names of no distinguished origin, their names being Tad, Ted, Tim, and such. But the bus stop was empty of Mrs. Sweet and the young Heracles was beside himself with anxiety and sorrow, for he loved his mother so and only so; and a dark cloud full of a toxic fire emerged from his forehead and he directed it toward the top of the Bennington Monument, a structure that was dedicated to a battle that led to a defeat and a triumph and the defeated and the triumphant were now settled into the normal disfigurement of everyday living, and he caused it to fall to the ground, just missing a bus full of citizens from Germany, who were taking a tour of New England just then.

  So beside himself was Heracles with anger and grief over Mrs. Sweet not being there to greet him when the school bus arrived at the bus stop that he sank to the ground, drew his feet up into his chest, his chin resting on his knees, so that he looked like an illustration of a fully developed child intact in his mother’s womb, an illustration commonly found on the walls of a doctor’s office. Oh come on! And that was the voice of the beautiful Persephone, his sister, and that is as it should be, for it was spring and she was released from living in the depths of the pocket of Mr. Sweet’s old Brooks Brothers tweed jacket (and the lining of that pocket was made of silk purchased in Hong Kong). Not knowing what else to do, she lifted him up with much ease, as if he were some just-harvested asparagus, or a pint of strawberries, or a plate of peas, or as if she were removing the hamster that had died overnight in its cage, and she placed him in the right-hand pocket of her own jacket which was made from polyethylene terephthalate and the pocket itself was lined with rayon. Now, now, she said, as she stroked the curve of his back with her thumb, her four fingers shielding his head which rested against his knees, it is very bad that she is not here to meet us once again when we get off the bus from school. Where the hell could she be? What the hell could she be doing? Oh, she just sits in that room writing about her goddamn mother, as if people had never had a mother who wanted to kill them before they were born in the history of the world; and the stupid father named Mr. Potter who couldn’t even read, and the fucking stupid little island on which she was born, full of stupid people whom history would be happy to forget but she has to keep reminding everybody about that place and those people and no one cares and she can’t stand it. And where is she? She is in that little room off the kitchen, and from that room she can see the kitchen and she is making us whatever we all want to eat and none of us want the same thing and how she manages to keep writing that shit … make her stop, make her stop before I kill her and it was so much better when she would only knit us stockings that were too big before they were washed and then were too small after they were washed and they just gathered dust in the wash basket because she couldn’t bear to throw them out, after all the time she had spent knitting them and the hats never kept us warm, they fell into our eyes when we were skiing and I almost killed myself coming down that black diamond wearing the stupid hat she had stayed up making for me as a present; and it is the stupid writing, it is the stupid writing, it is the stupid writing that’s keeping her from being on time to meet the school bus that was driven by Mr. Strange, Ralph is his name too and that is not a name with a distinguished lineage, and a man, you know, who should be locked up in a jail in a cell that is buried underground, could come and pick us up and take us to his house and murder us or violate us sexually and we would never be seen again or heard of again, not even be mentioned on the nightly news, vanished from the face of the earth like a species from a geological era that isn’t even yet detected—what is she doing, what is she doing, what the hell is she doing? She is sitting there in that room at the big desk that Donald made for her and she is thinking, thinking of a sentence and the way to end it: my mother would kill me if she got the chance, I would kill my mother if I had the courage, and as if such a thing were possible, she lives in that world of the room with the desk and the kitchen just beyond and she leaves us here all alone for a man to murder us, for tourists from Germany to stare at us, for all the other children and their mothers to see that she doesn’t love us, she only loves the world that she carries around in her head, a torrent of lies, all in her head, we are nothing to her, nothing, nothing, only those words in her head, and now look, the night is coming, the ink-black night is going to swallow us up and we will never be found, for we will be lost in the night, the night itself, as if it were the ink-black sea.

  * * *

  Where is she, where is she…? Then, oh just then Mrs. Sweet appeared in the old car, the old gray Kuniklos, the old car Mrs. Sweet fondly called Mr. McGregor, for she so loved to personalize everything, as if everything in the whole world were made solely for her; and when she saw her two children she blew up like a soufflé and actually right in her mind right then was the menu for dinner: crab soufflé, a salad of a mixture of newly sprouted leaves, the seeds had been purchased from Renee Shepherd and they had come in a packet that had been designed by the Shakers, a now extinct sect of devout people, with a French vinaigrette, ice cream if the children wanted it, from the store, not ice cream she had made herself—that she only did in the summer; she was very proud of them, and why? She couldn’t say, not now, not then … But the children were glad to see her or so she thought then. His sister had released the young Heracles from her pocket the minute she caught sight of the old gray Kuniklos as it crested the hill just in front of the Gatlin house; the young Heracles had unfolded himself from that eternal fetal fold and now he looked fresh like a flower just opening, or like a flower just opening as seen in a time-lapse film. Mrs. Sweet gathered up her dear children in her arms and drew them close to her with eyes closed as if they were a fragrant bouquet of Lilium nepalense just then picked, but really though she hustled them into the back of the old car and there was mold growing on the floor, the roof of the car had a leak in it, the door on the driver’s side did not close properly, letting in rain or snow as the case may be. In third gear, she turned onto Silk Road, crossed the Walloomsac River at the covered bridge, swiftly rounding the curves on Matteson Road, making a left on Harlan and then home to the house in which Shirley Jackson had once lived. But that journey home then, what of it? What of it now? For a forest stands between the covered bridge and Shirley Jackson’s house and just as they approached it Persephone passed her tongue over her lips and just as they crossed the boundary that separated town and village she then burst into song, not a song with everyday notes, not a song heard on the radio, and then again, it was not even a real song, it was a series of pitched sounds, each of them different, and they came in rows of twelve or maybe thirteen or fourteen, but twelve seemed more plausible, or so Mrs. Sweet thought, but she only thought this, she didn’t know with certainty then or now, as she writes this; and those rows of notes that were the same and then were not, for the orderings were not expected, thought Mrs. Sweet, and that was when she didn’t want to put a large man’s athletic sock in the opening of the beautiful Persephone’s mouth, the orderings were random, thought Mrs. Sweet, and that was when she wanted to throw the beautiful Persephone into an oblivion, an oblivion that was solely the heavens, a place where she would be held until Mrs.
Sweet could bear her very presence again. And the beautiful Persephone sang as if she were backed by an entire orchestra, a lavish one, as if she were in a great hall and an audience with no defining physical characteristics, no broad noses, no fine and yellow hair, an indifferent complexion, removed from historical events, was listening to her. But to the ears of the other occupants of the old Kuniklos, a car that was made in Germany but bore a Greek name, how annoying to hear the contents of the Delia’s catalog in that way, how annoying to hear the contents of the Wet Seal catalog in that way, how annoying to hear the contents of the beautiful Persephone’s desires in that way. She sang on, though singing, that act, so associated often with the feeling of being transported out of your current state of mind into another realm, a realm of something other than your real self, was not what the beautiful Persephone did; she sang and the singing itself was beautiful and she sang of the tweed coat whose hem fell just below the knee and the tweed coat that was cut in the style of a seaman in the British navy and of the dress that was made from barrels of oil that had been wrought into fabric that looked like gossamer and a dress of surreal beauty was fashioned from it, and she sang of the skirt that had wide pleats and was short and of the skirt that had narrow pleats and was long and of the boots that were thick-soled and of the boots that came up to the knee and of the boots that could not even be considered worth wearing by the beautiful Persephone or her friend the flame-haired Lamb who lived on Mechanic Street, or her friend who lived on the ramparts of a mountain in North Adams, Massachusetts, or her many other friends who lived in the summer along with her at Eisner Camp, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Her voice at the same twelve pitch and then in a row that might be familiar and then unexpectedly not, or so it seemed to poor, benighted Mrs. Sweet’s ears, for Mrs. Sweet only knew of Anglican hymns and then the Mighty Sparrow and then Motown and then disco and then the young Heracles loved Jay-Z, how cruel to make you love one thing twelve times and then change to something else and make you love that and then change to something else and make you love that too and then make the thing you loved new and not tell you and then you love that too and then change to something you had forgotten and make you love that too and then change to something you know and loved then and love now and make you think you don’t know it at all. How cruel! So thought Mrs. Sweet. So thought Mrs. Sweet, as she drove her children to their home, the house that was the house Shirley Jackson had lived in. And as Mrs. Sweet approached the house, that beautiful house, painted white with Doric columns built in something called a Victorian style, she thought that the twelve pitches arranged in a row and then repeated over and over again and then changed unexpectedly might be as beautiful as trees arranged in rows of five diagonally placed and evenly spaced and therefore called a quincunx, and this repetition, this design, is so deeply restful to the spirit, and Mrs. Sweet could testify to this, for she once saw this very thing in the woodland part of a garden in Tuscany.

  The twelve rows of notes, each the same, each varying slightly one from the other, so it seemed to Mrs. Sweet’s untutored and Third World–attuned ears, came to a sharp end, the beautiful Persephone shut her mouth, and Mrs. Sweet brought the gray car, which was named by the carmaker to honor a rodent much loved by children and hated by anyone with an unfenced vegetable garden, to an abrupt stop! The children said, “Jesus Christ, Mom” and “Oh fuck, Mom,” as their bodies lurched forward and then were restrained by the seatbelts which Mrs. Sweet always insisted they wear, and this unexpected flirtation with disaster would have been a delight and a thrill were it to take place on a ride in an amusement park, but not in the driveway of their own home sweet home.

  Oh then, oh then, but only to see it now: for the young Heracles rushed into the house, through the doors, into the world of a cavalcade of imaginary figures, Ninja Turtles, Ninja Bats, Ninja Boys who wore exquisitely styled capes in colors too vivid to be found in the known world and they fought and triumphed over creatures from the world to come, creatures from the world that was, and they were to be seen on television or VHS tapes, not at all on Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?; and the beautiful Persephone rushed into the house to instant message Meredith and Samantha and Joan and Iona and Jenny and another girl with whom she shared special memories of Eisner Camp in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and another girl whose father looked at vaginas all day because he was a gynecologist, and another girl whose parents tended a bed and breakfast in North Adams, Massachusetts, and another girl she had not yet met in person and never would meet in reality, and this absence of reality saddened Mrs. Sweet, for reality made up Now and Then, and Now and Then were without difference! Now and Then were not the same and yet Now and Then: for here was Mrs. Sweet and now she had two children and Mr. Sweet was her husband, the father of her two children, that was her Now and that was her Then, all being separate, and the separated formed a straight line that would now converge then, so thought Mrs. Sweet, as she followed her children into the depths of the house in which Shirley Jackson used to live, and it is true that the young Heracles and the beautiful Persephone had never heard of that woman who had lived in that house with the great big Doric columns, Victorian and Greek revival architecture. And what now? For Mrs. Sweet was entering the house, and just before she did that she paused on the threshold and then she stood very still: at her feet lay her life, it lay buried deep in an infernal-darkness, wine-hued or not, and it was guarded by a flock of her winged fears: “Not long after I had been made to copy Books One and Two of Paradise Lost as a punishment for misbehaving in class, I went to visit my godmother, Mrs. DeNully, a woman so large that she was unable to walk from the sofa to the chair without support, and if she had no support she would not have been able to do it at all. When she was not asleep, she stayed in the room that contained the sofa and some chairs, Morris chairs, and many bolts of cloth in every imaginable weave, or every weave available to the haberdashers in the British West Indies. These bolts of cloth came to her from mills in England and they were very good quality and not everybody could afford them: the woman who cleaned the DeNullys’ house got from them as a Christmas present three yards of cloth. There were dotted Swiss and Irish linen and beautiful seersucker and embroidered cotton and silk faille and all sorts of things that would make a beautiful dress even more so in the room with Mrs. DeNully. Mrs. DeNully was married to Mr. DeNully and he worked as a manager at Mendes Dockyard, and it belonged to the family by that name and they sold all things to do with a ship and all things to do with a house. He had come from Scotland without money and without family to Antigua when he was a very young man, sixteen or so, and not long after that he met and married Mrs. DeNully. She was then the illegitimate daughter of a rich man; her mother was descended from slaves and her father was descended from masters and she looked more like the masters and less like the slaves. Her mother and father were never married. Her father was married to a woman with whom he had a daughter, his only legitimate child. This daughter and Mrs. DeNully looked very much alike, but they hated each other and the hatred was so firmly established that no one even knew really when it started or what was the cause of it. This daughter married a man named Pistana and I don’t know now where he came from but sometimes people said Portugal. But Mrs. Pistana was in the haberdashery business also, and though the two sisters never spoke to each other they often referred customers to one another if the customers were looking for a kind of fabric that the one of them did not have in stock. In truth, they carried the same kinds of cloth, the one did not carry for sale something that the other did not. The kinds of cloth they sold came in one same shipment of dry goods, in the same ship, that left the same port from England. But it is Mrs. DeNully I am thinking of now, and when I mention her sister Mrs. Pistana and her husband Mr. Pistana, who sold pots and pans and cups and plates in the other half of the establishment that he and his wife owned, it is only to make Mrs. DeNully alive to me now as she was then.

  “Mrs. DeNully had four children, three boys and one girl, b
ut the girl died a long time ago, how long ago I did not know then, and the time the girl was alive was never mentioned at all. It was around the time I was going to the Moravian school and so I must have been around five years of age or six years of age, when I began to see her every day. I went to her house to have my lunch, for her house was right next to the Moravian church and my school was built on the grounds of the church in the eighteenth century by Moravian missionaries from somewhere in Germany. It was all right to approach her house for my lunch, for then the two dogs that were the pets of one her sons were locked up. They were not guard dogs, they were pets, and to show that they were pets and not just mere animals they were fed food that people ate, not spoiled food or food scraped from the bottom of the pan or other food that no one wanted to eat. But then, in the afternoons, after school when I was expected to stop by and say a thank you and good-bye to my godmother, that would be Mrs. DeNully, the dogs often were no longer locked up; the son, whose pets they were, would have returned home from his school and the dogs were then let out. From a distance, they could see me leaving my school and crossing the field and the old graveyard and the lawn of the Moravian minister’s house and then, when I was not too far from the old cistern, they would run toward me and pounce on me and throw me to the ground and then stand over me panting. Their names were Lion and Rover. Lion was the color of a lion, a lion I had seen in a book; Rover was just a dog and it was he who would always put one of his front paws on my small trembling body and then rest his own bodily weight on it, then lift himself up and hold the other front paw aloft and as he did this he breathed heavy and fast. I then wanted to cry but not with tears from my eyes or a sound from my mouth, I wanted to cry from my stomach, because all my feeling was in my stomach but I didn’t know how to do this. Then the owner of the dogs would appear, magically, for I had not seen him at all, and he would look down on me and rub his dogs’ heads and call to them by their names and feed them hard-boiled duck eggs as he walked away from me.”