One Year of Ugly

by Caroline Mackenzie

  If it sounds like it’d flip you head over heels to be living amidst all of it, you’d be right. But at last the frenzy was over – at least for the island, if not for our houses crammed full of people. We were bang in the middle of Lent now, with sky-high fish prices and everyone gloating about how they’ve given up chocolate, parading their diets as a Lenten sacrifice. And as the Season of Self-Righteous Waistline-Trimming crescendoed into the ever-climactic Easter Sunday, we were sailing along an unrelenting tide of illegals. Or rather – we were bucking and pitching over the tumultuous, shark-filled waters of our illegals, a deluge that had been steadily drowning us since long before Ash Wednesday.

  For starters, there were the practical strains of higher utility bills and more mouths to feed that had forced us all to pick up the financial slack however we could. Papá was working between school pick-ups and on weekends now, using his minivan as an unregistered taxi. It was the kind of work he’d specifically wanted to avoid, knowing that the wrong kind of passenger could spell disaster for all of us, a passenger who might see him for the vulnerable illegal he was and take advantage of that. ‘Pulling bull’, as the locals called taxi driving, also took him to parts of the island where he’d never normally venture: East Port of Spain and its ganglands, divided with invisible borders that, if crossed under the wrong circumstances, could leave you with a bullet in the head or worse. Yes – worse. Mamá had extended her working hours to a solid fourteen hours a day, with Zulema coming straight home from the Colour Me Beautiful spa to help her. They were exhausted, their fingers and forearms aching with carpal tunnel from grooming other people all day into the night. As for me, I’d almost tripled my intake of translation projects, my days running nearly as long as Mamá’s and Zulema’s as I scrambled to meet tight deadline after tight deadline. My novel, yet again, was shoved aside for lack of time and creative energy. It felt like running on a treadmill with the setting on max, gripping the arm rails and trying your best to keep up the pace so you wouldn’t fall flat on your face.

  Then there were the more human vexations that came with hosting so many illegals – strange men you felt uneasy around, people who’d finger our belongings like they were working out what prices they might fetch, bitches with attitude, lazy fuckers who thought they were at Ugly’s Relocation Resort and came with expectations almost as high as the Manriques’. Worst of all was the complete loss of privacy – sharing the bathroom, the TV, the kitchen, having to be fully dressed and bra-clad at all times so you wouldn’t catch some illegal lustily eyeing the outline of your nipples. The walls of the house seemed to bulge and throb with all the tense energy the illegal influx had brought. And all that got me through was Román. He was the paradoxical cure and cause of all my chagrin, the only thing that could ease my constant irritation at living in the halfway house he was imposing on us. It wasn’t just the nights we spent together that served as an escape, both physical and mental, giving me the release of sex and good conversation, but smaller things that seemed to fill me with a burst of helium, allowing me to briefly but blissfully float up and away from my overcrowded house. Like when one afternoon, after giving a family of six our standard welcome speech and a stack of Jamaican patties, I was already seething at the two eldest children, teenage boys who’d asked between mouthfuls if there wasn’t going to be ‘any proper fucking food’ for them to eat after the patties. I’d told them no, there fucking wasn’t because this wasn’t a fucking hotel, which had earned me ample stink-eye from the parents, but when I locked myself in my room afterwards, hoping to cool my temper enough to get back to the translation I’d been doing, I found a collection of short stories by Charles Bukowski on my desk. A page in it was dog-eared. I opened it to the page and read the line Román had said reminded him of me: ‘The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it …’ And then the puerile disrespect of the teen brothers suddenly seemed funnier, fodder for a good anecdote I’d roll my eyes over when I saw Román next. Just the promise of seeing him was enough to get me through each day.

  A week or so later, I got a call from him on the usual blocked number. It was around eleven at night. ‘Hey,’ I said, knowing it was him. ‘The usual?’ It was our code for fixing the usual two a.m. pick-up time before heading to another of Román’s seemingly never-ending line-up of isolated spots, all discovered in response to his city-boy’s hunger for nature that had led him to explore every cranny of his adopted island.

  ‘I can’t tonight,’ he said.

  I frowned, confused. We never spoke on the phone for safety reasons, even though he only used burner phones. He would only call to confirm ‘the usual’, and we’d have our conversations face-to-face after expunging the invariable sexual craving that had mushroomed in us during whatever short time had elapsed since our last night together.

  ‘Is everything okay then?’ I asked.

  ‘I just wanted you to know that I wish I could see you tonight.’

  ‘I wish I could see you, too.’

  He was silent then and I felt that he was smiling into the phone.

  ‘I’ll call when I can meet,’ he said. ‘Maybe night after tomorrow.’

  ‘Sure.’

  That less-than-a-minute-long conversation had sustained my good mood for a solid two days after, even when an illegal decided to give herself a Brazilian in our bathroom, leaving the floor, toilet rim and somehow even the sink, dusted with shorn bristly pubes that she inexplicably felt no compulsion to clean up.

  As for the rest of the family, I had no clue what their coping mechanisms were as we endured that steady flood of illegals. Sure there were some illegals who broke your heart and made you swell with unwarranted pride that you were able to help them in their time of need, but for the most part, I found myself increasingly thinking of how accurate Sartre’s observation had been: hell really is other people.

  Nevertheless, we slowly, inevitably became inured. To the clashing personalities, the shady characters, the disrespect, the non-existent privacy, the enervating work routines. We even grew habituated to the most harrowing stories of destitution and deprivation, of abuse by the military and the Guardia, the insinuations but never outright admissions of torture by the most haunted-looking illegals who landed up at our door. It took a lot to shock us now.

  Or so we thought.

  As we discovered on Easter Sunday, when everyone had congregated at our house for another of Papá’s patriarchal lunches, we still had the capacity to be totally, utterly shocked by even the most unoriginal of family crises.

  We were in a rare illegal-free period for that Easter long weekend, which was a relief to say the least. Well, it was a relief to most of us. Aunt Milagros, who was back to looking like she’d forgotten what a comb was, and had a stronger-than-ever parfum de ashtray trailing her, spent half of Easter lunch rambling about how she thought her illegals had been feeding information on her to Ugly. She was doing this, by the way, with Sancho’s girlfriend Megan present. A big no-no. Thankfully Megan was out of earshot, eating on the back porch with Sancho, but my father still had to fake a violent coughing fit to get Milagros to shut the fuck up when Megan came to the table for a second helping.

  ‘¿Qué te pasa, hermana? Have you forgotten Megan is Trini?’ he chided when Megan had gone back out. ‘You can’t talk like that in front of anyone outside the family.’

  Aunt Milagros was gripping her knife and fork in fists, leaning over her plate like she wanted to lunge across the table at him. ‘I’m telling you this last load of illegals in my house was acting strange! They’re feeding back to Ugly, Hector. Why wouldn’t they?’

  ‘What would they even tell Ugly about you?’ scoffed Mauricio through a mouthful of food. ‘That you pray ten times a day and go to a hundred Masses a week?’

  Her face twisted into a knot. ‘Ugly might want to know about my work at the charity. About my connections in Venezuela.’

  ‘Ha! Catholic charity connections. Just what Ugly’s interested in,’ Mauricio chortled, lifting a b
eer to his still-stuffed mouth.

  ‘No more talk of any of this here today,’ said my father firmly. ‘Milagros, you need to relax. You’re letting this whole situation get to you.’

  She harrumphed, scraped her chair away from the table and went to the kitchen.

  ‘You think she’s okay?’ I whispered to Papá as she walked away.

  ‘Milagros has always been high-strung, always thinks everyone’s out to get her. I wouldn’t worry about it.’

  Who knows how differently things might’ve turned out if he had.

  Along with Megan, who’d made the cut as we didn’t have to feed any extra illegals, Fidel and his mousy, polite mother Camille had also joined us for lunch. Now nearly two years old, Fidel had sprouted the same thick, wavy hair as Mauricio, and had his father’s pouty mouth and slanting eyes. Good thing Aunt Celia died when she did, because if Fidel had grown up and crossed her in the street, she’d have known without a doubt that Mauricio had cheated on her in Trinidad and his ass would’ve been toast. After lunch, we were all ooing and ahhhing at Fidel’s antics when Vanessa, out of nowhere, walked to the centre of the porch and cleared her throat.

  ‘Excuse me, everyone, I have something I would like to tell you all.’

  ‘Now, mija?’ This was Mauricio, resting his teacup on the ground before standing.

  I glanced at Sancho. He was like a hunting dog that’s just heard a twig snap – eyes staring intently, not a muscle moving.

  Vanessa nodded slowly. ‘Yes, Papi. Why not now?’

  No one spoke or touched their coffee. All eyes converged on those big bouncy boobs as Vanessa took short, nervous breaths.

  And then out it came. ‘Estoy embarazada.’

  Embarazada? She was embarrassed? No, Anglophones: pregnant.

  As Vanessa blurted out the news, twisting her hands, tears smearing her make-up, I couldn’t resist observing Sancho’s reaction.

  Fun fact: when pugs get worked up, their protuberant eyes sometimes pop right out of their heads.

  I share that trivia because Sancho looked like a pug that’d gotten worked up. Like at any second, his eyeballs were going to catapult across the porch and hit Vanessa in the forehead.

  Megan, meanwhile, had her face down in her mug, doing a poor job of hiding a smug smile at Vanessa’s misfortune. It surprised me, actually, that her first thought wasn’t that Sancho was the one who might’ve knocked up Vanessa.

  Zulema, bless her, was the first to say anything. She went to Vanessa and hugged her. ‘Felicidades,’ she said. Vanessa grabbed onto her, bucking with a sob. Then Aunt Milagros and my parents, obviously touched, joined the group hug, murmuring condolences-cum-well-wishes like ‘A baby is always a blessing,’ and ‘It’ll all work out.’ When Vanessa was released from their collective embrace, the twins rose from their seats and engulfed her in another hug, a sandwich of long Amazonian hair and peachy asses.

  I stayed in my chair and watched the scene play out. I wasn’t explicitly trying to be a bitch, but I was wary of Vanessa for two reasons: my illogical loyalty to Aunt Celia that made me feel guilty any time I found myself enjoying a conversation with Vanessa, and because of the time I’d seen her and Sancho under the mango tree. If I got close to her, I could wind up caught between the two of them, embroiled in something I’d rather know nothing about. So I’d been keeping my distance, and felt it would read as distinctly hypocritical to now play the sympathetic older pseudo-cousin, wrapping her in a big phoney embrace while we all waited for her to proceed with the rest of the announcement: who the father was.

  Papá was the one who eventually asked. ‘¿Y el padre?’

  I would’ve bet a kidney that Sancho was the perpetrator from how red and bloated his face got at that question, like all the blood in his body had shot up to his head and it was going to rocket clean off his spinal column.

  Vanessa wiped her tears, leaving swatches of bare skin on either cheek, like a window wiper had just cleared a dusty windscreen. I leaned forward, a spectator at the Colosseum. Then Vanessa blurted out the one name no one expected, although in hindsight, the writing had been on the wall from day one.

  ‘It’s King De Oruña Willoughby!’

  She dragged Willoughbyyyy out like a war cry, as though she were calling him back to her, crying out over the Atlantic Ocean that separated us from jolly old England where he was merrily living in exile, totally ignorant of the spawn he’d left behind.

  As Vanessa’s wounded wail tapered out, Sancho jumped to his feet, hurling his coffee mug across the porch. ‘Well long live el desgraciado king!’ The mug exploded against the wall, sending ceramic shards and splinters flying through the air and skittering across the tiles. We all ducked, dodging the shrapnel. Everyone but Megan, who was staring at Sancho in the very same way a bull stares down a torero, while he stared at Vanessa with nothing but heartache.

  DANGEROUS ADDICTIONS

  So what happened between Vanessa and the ever so charming King? Nothing that hasn’t happened countless times before, ever since antediluvian man realized that any especially beautiful antediluvian woman was usually riddled with insecurity, struggling to mask the fear that she was dull or worthless without her looks. In the long tradition of his silver-tongued and handsome forebears, King spotted that Achilles heel lickety-split and told Vanessa everything she wanted to hear, made her feel special, smart, unique, blah blah. She ate it all up. Even believed him when he gave her some story about how he’d been rendered sterile by an injury he sustained in the army. That’s how she wound up pregnant. They’d gone at it like rabbits during King’s ten-day sojourn at Mauricio’s house, and not once had they used protection.

  I learned all of this from the twins, who reported as a single journalistic organism, one sister seamlessly picking up from where the other left off, filling in every gap with what they’d individually gleaned from Mauricio’s phone calls to Vanessa’s mother, and of course, from what Vanessa herself told them.

  I thawed more towards Vanessa after I found out what happened, tried to be thoughtful when she came around by switching off Mamá’s electronic Glade air fresheners plugged in all over the house that triggered her now-sensitive gag reflex. Because let’s be real – if I’d been her age and Román had cropped up, swearing he was infertile, telling me I was beautiful and unique as a snowflake, I would’ve probably let him knock me up too.

  I’m sure you’re wondering how King reacted to the news when Vanessa told him. Well, keep on wondering. Mauricio begged Román to track him down, and though Román did get King’s latest address, nothing ever came of Mauricio’s indignant letters – possibly because no one opens a mailbox any more – and it became clear pretty quickly that Vanessa was on her own with that baby.

  And Sancho? He was dumped on the spot after smashing the coffee mug in a flagrant declaration of his spurned love for knocked-up Vanessa. After the shock of the smashed mug had passed, Megan screamed at Sancho to go fornicate with himself, to put it euphemistically. Sancho didn’t even respond. Didn’t even follow her when she stormed out, her kitten heels click-clacking all the way out the front door, never to return.

  Now he was on a dating rampage. I don’t know if it was his way of having his wounds licked (literally) or of proving he didn’t care about Vanessa (or for that matter, Megan), but whatever the case, he was on a hot streak. Any time he came over for dinner, which was a couple times a week, regardless of whether or not we all were looking after a batch of illegals, he would bring a different woman. It was like he was bobbing for them in a UN barrel: Indian, Chinese, white, black, Syrian, Lebanese, Carib, mixed. Name any race present in Trinidad and I can guarantee Sancho fucked it.

  Some of the women were so attractive and educated that we only saw them the once – they couldn’t possibly tolerate the self-destructive way Sancho was drinking to soothe his hurt pride. Others were so unattractive (think missing teeth, morbid obesity) that Sancho tossed them the second the rum goggles cleared.

  So between the one
s who were too good for him and the ones who weren’t good enough for anyone, there was a rapid rotation of women passing through Sancho’s house, and by extension, our house too.

  ‘Hijo, we need to keep a low profile,’ warned my father. ‘We can’t mix too much with the locals. How do you know these women won’t report us? How can you explain the illegals staying with you and with us?’

  ‘I tell them it’s all family,’ said Sancho, waving a dismissive hand. ‘They don’t know a thing. Think we’ve been here legally for years. Don’t sweat it.’

  And then it was time for another drink. It was always time for another drink.

  I asked Román for advice about Sancho one night. We were lying on a blanket at the bank of a jade-green river, listening to the groans of bamboo and other now-familiar nocturnal sounds of the rainforest while sharing our usual post-coital joint.

  ‘He won’t listen to anyone,’ I was saying. ‘At this rate, he’s going to drop dead of liver disease before he’s thirty.’

  ‘It’ll pass.’ Román paused, tapping his cheek to blow a series of smoke rings. ‘When male pride takes a hit, it hurts. The drinking is just temporary anaesthesia.’

  I rolled my body onto his, nuzzled his neck. ‘I find it very hard to believe your pride was ever hurt by a woman.’

  ‘Everyone’s had their heart broken,’ he said, running a hand along my spine, tossing the stub of the joint with the other. Then his face darkened slightly. ‘I do need to speak to Sancho, though. The women coming in and out of his house isn’t good for business. I’ve been letting it slide but it’s been going on too long now.’

  I pulled my head back to scan his face. ‘You’re just going to talk to him, right?’

  Román hadn’t been looking at me while he spoke, was looking over my shoulder towards the river. ‘Of course I’ll just talk to him.’ He shifted his eyes to mine now. ‘Once he listens and does what I say.’