Bivouac

by Kwame Dawes

  “I wasn’ lying,” she said quietly.

  “I didn’ say you were lying,” Ferron said.

  “You should be glad. You should be glad.” She was raising her voice again. “I doing you a favor. Everybody got to know who Jesus is . . .”

  “Oh shut up!”

  “Ferron, don’ tell me to shut up.” She spoke slowly and quietly.

  “I said yuh mus’ shut up,” he said again, this time not shouting.

  They were silent for a few minutes. Then she spoke.

  “Why yuh take everything so serious?” she asked softly.

  “Because it is getting serious,” he replied, staring ahead.

  “But it musn’, it musn’. You don’ even know what going happen nex’ week; you don’ know what I gwine do . . . I tell you things happening and—”

  “Please, stop it, stop it. Forget it, alright, just forget it.” He moved over to her. “Forget the whole blasted world.”

  “I don’ know.” She got up slowly. “I never did want this to happen.”

  “It’s alright,” he said. He did not believe himself.

  “You don’ know about me—”

  “I don’t want to know,” he said.

  They walked through the gate, and with the help of their flashlights they found the wooden cottage behind a small hillock in the middle of the grounds. They walked with arms around each other this time. It was dark and nobody could see them. They could not see themselves.

  Unpublished notes of George Ferron Morgan

  I was looking for the certificate and I found these letters. I wrote them in 1958. Cuba was freshly free. Revolution was so possible. It is hard for people to understand how possible it all seemed to us then—sometimes it even felt inevitable; we were just concerned about the spoils, how power would be divided. What a romantic warrior poet I was going to be. I believed in change. I really believed that there was a revolution coming to this island. Who was the man who wrote these words? I was not joking, I was serious. I was ready to slaughter the betrayers. Ready. I wrote to Locksley:

  “I am worried that the watered-down socialist party might suddenly, in another election, pass from the scene, without the necessary preparation for a takeover. The boys who will be vital in this situation are not in the West Indies today; they are here in Notting Hill and Brixton. If we could throw 500 of those boys, who have become politically aware in this country, into the W.I. scene, the clowns in power now would disappear forever. They are the betrayers. And Locksley, with real working-class authority behind me, I should not have the slightest hesitation in shooting down these perpetually compromised politicians or any of the others, like my gracious and kind friend Rupert—he still preens about with the self-congratulatory look of pity and concern every time we sit to talk over a drink because he did me that favor; he lent me fifty pounds when I was at Oxford and starving, and even though I have paid him back, he continues to find ways to remind me of his kindness—well, he too will go down if he threatens to become offensive. It is a vital and fundamental issue and there is no easy escape from it. If I myself waver, after fourteen years of conviction, when the crisis occurs, I give you full authority to shoot me down.”

  twenty-two

  The blackness was weightless, like a silk cloth around Ferron as he stood on the creaking porch. Above him the stars dusted the sky. From behind the two black hills, rising like round breasts in front of the cottage, there was a glow of amber light—the city. If he walked a few chains in either direction, moving away from behind the hills, he would see the city, like a jewel, glittering brightly behind the dark mounds. But the light was far away. Around him, the darkness was thicker, like an emptiness spreading deep into the surrounding trees. He could hear the faint rustle of leaves as breezes turned across the valley. The din of insects filled the night. He stared, trying to make his mind as empty as the dark space before him, trying to vomit out images that demanded thought, decisions—actual memories of the last month. He was trying to forget. It was difficult; things were closing in on him, his relationships were beginning to define themselves as mistakes, cumbersome, untidy mistakes with implications. People would get hurt, people would want to talk about feelings, about abandonment. His mind moved to Delores, still trying to make sense of the last weeks—was it the death or were the problems before that? Was it the rape, or was that too an excuse? And if it was the rape or the death, did that mean that the trauma would pass—that they could come back to a place of stability, of the consistency that they had known for a while? And would he always think about her, think about what she would feel in every situation he was in? He thought of Mitzie, Theresa—women with their own agendas, their own existences, who would suddenly stop the indulgence, the uncertainty of his actions, who would seek their own definitions, ways of understanding themselves and whatever he and they had together. He wanted this emptiness to last forever, but things were closing in on him, and he would have to see things ending soon. Soon, he knew, he would be alone—more alone than he had ever been before. It frightened him.

  He could hear Mitzie moving around inside the cottage. She was washing the plates and pots that he had cooked with. He’d wanted to do it but she insisted. The domesticity of this shared activity bothered him; this is what had quickly taken over the cooking of the meal.

  They were yet to settle on their sleeping arrangements. There was only one bed and it was barely large enough to hold both of them. He offered to sleep on the floor, somewhat embarrassed at finding only one bed—the other bed that was usually there had disappeared. It bothered him that she would think that he had planned it this way. He offered to sleep on the floor and she was amused.

  “No man, me will sleep on the floor, ’cause I use to sleeping on floors, man.” She grinned. “A man like you couldn’ manage the floor, man.”

  He ignored her and made his bed on the floor. A thick blanket, a cotton sheet, another cotton sheet, and then a thicker blanket. He rolled up some clothes in a towel and patted it down as his pillow. She watched his ritual, then she patterned everything he did, making her bed on the floor beside him. They did this together in silence. When she was finished, they looked at each other and Ferron burst out laughing. It was a bit strained. Mitzie did not laugh. Ferron’s laugh faded slowly to a nervous chuckle.

  “You don’ learn yet that yuh musn’ spoil black people? ’Cause when you do that, them will climb all over yuh.”

  Ferron tried laughing again; he did not know what else to do. There was something about her tone that suggested that she was making a bigger point, but he was not sure. He was waiting for her to toss it back at him, his unease, his nervous laughter, his stupidity—the joke of it all. But she did not. Instead she started to hum a song. She unpacked some more of her things and the words became clearer: “Sorry fe mawga dawg / Mawga dawg turn roun’ bite yuh . . .”

  He walked to the kitchen to avoid another argument. There was something about Mitzie on this trip. A friend of his, a teacher from his sixth form days who had eventually become a friend, used to say all the time, “I know when they are ready to leave me; they start to pick fights. Sometimes they don’t even know they are leaving.” She was divorced three times by the time she was thirty. When they were eating Mitzie asked him if he spat in the food. He was tempted to get annoyed, but he thought of his friend’s maxim and decided not to help her out. He said he hadn’t. She said she had done that once, after seeing the film The Color Purple. She spat into the soup of a lady she was working for who was being a real bitch. She did it because she had a cold and she thought that it would mix well with the thick pea soup, and maybe it would afflict the woman with a dreadful cold. Eventually, the old lady did get a cold and that was like a curse on Mitzie because the woman was more miserable than ever.

  “But it wasn’t the same cold, you know, not like mine,” she said. “’Cause the soup did well hot and it kill off them germs before them even come inside that woman. And anyway, that woman heart so bitter it would mas
h up any germs that mighta come near her. A real bitch. But it sweet me fe watch her eat that soup—an’ me stand up right thereso in front of her, and it was like . . . It was like sex.”

  “Well, I never did it, but it wouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “After all, we know what our spit taste like, right—and you like how mine taste.”

  She stood up, leaned forward. As she moved he knew exactly what she was about to do. She let a thin line of spit drop into his plate. He stared at it, then looked at her. She was smiling. He mixed it into the rice and put a forkful into his mouth. He chewed it and swallowed it, staring at her.

  “That is sick,” she said.

  “You think?” He continued eating. “I call it love.”

  She sat down and started to eat again. She kept looking at him, trying to probe his mind, as if asking a question, as they ate. The food was spicy and they were both sweating. They said nothing, but Ferron could feel things growing lighter, more sensual. He was sure of what was going to happen in the room that night.

  He could hear her singing again, but he could not recognize the song. She kept the tap flowing as she washed the dishes. He stared into the dark, trying not to think of the night to come, trying not to anticipate, to desire. Instead he thought of the next morning, them walking down the hill with a mess of confusion to resolve. It would be over, he could tell, but the thought unsettled him.

  She had wanted to be a singer. At first she was going to be a gospel singer, but that was aborted after the business with her uncle. Now she wanted to sing good reggae and sweet rocksteady love songs. She had already been in the studio and had sung sweetly over a standard dub track (two chords, a rolling bassline). Ferron had heard it. Her voice was mellow, like an embrace. The mixture of the reggae and the distinctive sound of Mitzie, lazy, almost uninvolved, stirred something very sensual in Ferron. He wanted to hold her and dance when he heard the demo. She said she would be back in the studio soon to do some backup for some popular singer, but she really wanted to do her own thing. Her friend, the sugar daddy, had promised to help her out. Ferron laughed at the idea.

  “Hey, that man is a married man and him willing to help me better myself, alright?” She spoke with some irritation. “You love go on like you better than everybody else, eh?”

  “So what? You think he is using you?” Ferron asked.

  “Him is helping me. I make my own decisions. Or you feel this whole business is a joke, right?” She stood and stopped the cassette, taking it out. “Some people like it, alright?”

  “I like it. I wasn’t saying that the—” He could see that the damage had already been done. His attempts would sound condescending. “I was just worried about him taking advantage of . . .”

  He heard nothing more about the music and her plans after that. It was hard to make it into Mitzie’s world when she shut the door. He gave up.

  As he thought of this, he could hear her voice coming closer behind him. The water was no longer flowing. Just her voice, soft in the night. Then she stopped singing.

  “Sorry,” she said quietly.

  “For what?”

  “I shouldn’ spit in the food. That was a wicked piece a nastiness.”

  “No, no. I liked it. I mean, it was alright,” he said. “But you alright?”

  “Yeah man.” She stayed behind him. “So you not vex with me?”

  “No, I not vex.”

  “Yuh sure?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She moved beside him. She touched his face with her palm. It smelled of black pepper, onions, and lotion. He pulled her to him. She let her body gather around him. He spoke softly in her ears, a stream of words that came like the desire to cry for no good reason, like the aching of an orgasm at the verge. She held him and listened.

  “I can remember being a baby. I know I can. Maybe it is those old pictures now turning yellow with age. It sounds like a poem, I know, but it is the only way to say it. A wild-eyed child with an unruly jungle of hair. I stared into the camera; I can remember doing that, staring into the camera; the camera was encased in brown leather, and the photographer wore brown trousers and a white shirt, and hard, dusty, black shoes. He wore black thick-rimmed glasses, but I can’t remember his face. I knew to stare into the camera. But I can go further back. Back to when I was wrapped in the flesh and water of my mother where it was always warm, soft. My mother would lift me, kiss me with a sucking noise on my cheek with her lips wrapped over her teeth to protect me. She smelled of warm earth, sweet like a baby.

  “I know what it tastes like—that milk in my mouth—light, thin. It came in a warm, seeping flow, filling my mouth before I realized it. I remember how to suck and swallow, pressing the breasts with my fist.

  “It was a soft, half-lit world full of sensations—touching, touching. There is this feeling of weight inside my throat—it hurts . . . What have you done to me?”

  She squeezed him tightly. He could feel the wet of her own tears on his chest. They held each other there in the cold.

  His head fell down to her shoulders, his tongue touching the warmth of her skin. He nestled into the softness of her breasts, touching, cupping through the thin cotton. Moisture from his mouth soaked the fabric, but he could taste the sweetness of her milk seeping out.

  “Don’ taste it,” she said.

  “Uhuh.” He kept licking.

  “The milk coming down,” she said. She held his head in place.

  “Uhuh.” Sucking through the fabric.

  “Don’t swallow it,” Mitzie said from deep in her throat.

  “Why?” he mumbled.

  “Bad luck,” she said, still holding his head against her.

  “No,” he said.

  “Don’t.” Softer.

  “Uhuh.” He swallowed.

  “Bad luck,” she said.

  “Sweet.” His voice was slurred.

  “You think you are a baby, nuh?” She rocked his head. There was playfulness in her voice.

  “Uhuh.” He swallowed again. His lips moved upward over her breasts, to her throat, to her mouth.

  They kissed. Her tongue probed the inside of his cheek, prodded his teeth, pressed against his tongue.

  “Well, if you feel yuh is a baby, yuh cyaan sleep on the floor, then. You have to sleep side a your mother,” she said, walking inside the cottage. Ferron stood in the cold looking out. He heard Mitzie humming again. He walked inside to her.

  * * *

  She was beside him when he woke up. He had dreamed of the funeral, the undertaker, Mrs. Abrams, talking and talking, her hands pulling newspaper after old newspaper from a box and laying them before him. In his dream, the body had been buried; a long ceremony at a sunlit graveyard, and he had stood there crying, staring into the gaping grave. Mitzie was on the other side in black, looking at him. “Don’t look down,” she said. “Don’t look down.” Her face was hidden by a thick scarf, like the woman at the morgue, fanning imaginary flies from her face. Mitzie stood there looking at him.

  There was a chill in the room. She was lying beside him with her face in his chest, her hands thrown around his body, sleeping deeply. They were on the floor. It was still dark. He began to talk. As he spoke, he could feel her stirring.

  “I will remember everything ’bout this, everything. It can’t leave me. You, this place, everything.” He stopped. “I don’t want to forget any of it. I don’t want to understand any of it—”

  “Me too,” she said into his chest. “It did nice.”

  “I wish I knew he was in heaven,” Ferron said.

  “Maybe,” she said, her mouth tickling his chest.

  “You ever think of heaven, Mitzie? Of dying, and then going to somewhere?”

  “That’s where I going, yes. If anywhere at all, it mus’ be there.”

  “You’re sure.” It was hard to tell if she was joking.

  “I jus’ know. God love me. I don’ have nothing in me not to love,” she said. “You know that. You know that.”

  “I
know,” he said, running his hand down her back. “I know.”

  “Yuh hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  “Yuh stomach say yuh hungry,” she said. “Yuh don’ hear it?”

  “It’s because I don’t know if I will see him there, you know,” he said, still staring into the blackness. “Death is final, like when you dead Mitzie, tha’s it—nothing else . . .”

  “So life go, Ferron,” she said softly.

  “This thing won’ last, will it?”

  “It cyaan work. You an’ me different. You don’ want a woman like me. I have things to do and a man like you cyaan help me. I like you, Ferron, but me is not no dreamer. I want house and land, I want a good life, I want a life for my pickney—I want to sing, make a record.” He tried to cut in, but she stopped him. “You, you want a mother right here now, Ferron. Not me. Tomorrow, you gwine look on this and say it was nice, and then. And then, tha’s it. Nice.” She was silent after that.

  “One day, you will hear me on the radio, or read about me in a newspaper, and you will tell people how you know me and how they musn’t be fooled. You will say: ‘Cho, that guy? Go on like a real saint, eh? That one is a real hypocrite man; a real hypocrite.’” Ferron was not sure where that was coming from, but in a way he wanted to hurt her, wanted to show her that it hurt that she thought he was so inadequate, so unable to make her life meaningful. She was right, but it hurt that she said it like that—so casually, so confidently, so dismissively.

  But she said nothing in reply to him. They lay there in silence for a while. Then he started to get up. She did not move.

  “You really feel tha’s how me stay?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “I woulda never say something like that, Ferron; never. I love you; you woulda never know how much yuh inna my skin, Ferron, you woulda never know.” She buried her face in his neck. She started humming, the sensation of her throat vibrating against his body. He held her head, playing with her hair, massaging her skull slowly. He saw Mitzie in her blue jeans and white blouse walking away from him, gradually fading into a speck in his eye. He wondered whether they would meet in heaven.