Girls' Night In

by Jessica Adams

  She used to be a good dancer. When she’d started performing publicly, she would dance while she sang, but for six years now a recurring back problem had made her leave all the moves to her back-up singers. She had no intention of going on the dance floor with Paolo and definitely not alongside those young girls who shook their hips faster than the eye could follow.

  ‘No, I don’t feel like dancing. I’m sleepy.’

  He shrugged. ‘OK, I’ll walk back with you.’

  There was no one on the patio of the pousada, and he accompanied her towards her room which was at the end of a paved track that led from the beach to the back of the guesthouse. She had asked for a room at the back hoping to be spared night-noise from the beach, but the two blue-eyed sisters who ran the pousada hadn’t told her about the bar when she’d checked in.

  A few steps from her door, Paolo stubbed his toe on one of the paving stones and cried out in pain. She peered closely at him, trying to see if he were pretending, but the grimace looked genuine.

  ‘Come inside,’ she said. ‘Let me look at it.’ In the light she saw that the bandage on his toe was soaked with blood.

  ‘What’s wrong with your toe, anyway?’ she asked, as she pulled him into the bathroom.

  ‘A snake bit me.’

  ‘You’re joking? Here, on Morro?’

  ‘Yes. I stepped right on it. Up on the hill, near the waterfall.’

  She decided not to ask any more questions, telling him instead to hold his foot under the shower while she took off the bandage. Afterwards, she got her first-aid travel kit and put Mercurochrome and a new bandage on his toe.

  ‘Obrigado,’ he said, breathing deeply. ‘You’re such a nice girl.’

  ‘I’m forty-five,’ she snapped, vexed for no reason. ‘I could be your mother.’

  ‘My mother is thirty-six,’ he replied. ‘But you look much younger, believe me.’

  She sighed, unable to think of an appropriate retort; she hoped her son never talked about her in that way.

  ‘Beautiful room,’ Paolo said, taking in the wide bed with the mosquito netting, the granite floor, the mahogany chest and chair and the white hammock on the balcony, just visible through the French windows.

  ‘Haven’t you ever been inside the pousada?’

  ‘Not in this room,’ he answered, with a smile and squint.

  She opened the windows after spreading mosquito repellent over her arms and face. She handed the little yellow bottle to him but he shook his head: ‘They don’t bite me.’ He went to lie in the hammock. ‘Come,’ he said.

  She took off her shoes and lay beside him. He kissed her, long and deep, to the sighing of the breeze, the pounding of the waves, the thumping of the music from the bar, and the buzzing of the mosquitoes. They were feasting on her legs. She had forgotten to put repellent there.

  She came up for air. ‘Let’s go back inside,’ she said. They walked in, holding hands; she closed the windows, and went to sit on the bed, lifting up the mosquito net so he could come under it as well. Later she would forget who took whose clothes off; she only knew that one minute she was clothed, and the next she wasn’t. Nor was he. He was lying on her and she was trying to pull him closer. His hand was in her hair, his tongue in her mouth, his thighs between hers, and she wanted more. But he was slowing down, holding back. He whispered words that she didn’t want to be bothered with; why did some men always want to talk during love-making? Antonio had been like that, too.

  But the more she tried to weld her body to his, the more insistent the whispering became, until she was forced to pay attention. Camisinha? He wanted his shirt back? Was he cold? Camisinha. Condom! Yes, that was it. He wanted to put on a condom. How thoughtful.

  ‘Que quere voce?’ she asked, just to be sure.

  He asked if she had a condom. He had forgotten to take one with him.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I can’t get pregnant.’ She couldn’t think of the Portuguese word for hysterectomy.

  She smiled at him and tried to pull his head down to hers, but he remained unbending. ‘It’s better with a camisinha.’ he said. ‘AIDS’

  She sprang out of bed, almost pulling the mosquito net’s fixture from the ceiling. ‘Jesus Christ. Are you telling me you have AIDS?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want to get it. I mean, we just met. I don’t know anything about you.’

  She stared at him before her Kingston temper came blasting forth. ‘Put on your clothes and take yourself out of my room,’ she shouted. She said other things as well, perhaps even threw in a couple of ‘rasses’ which he wouldn’t have understood anyway. But at her wrath he dressed and limped quickly out.

  She immediately started packing, muttering to herself, vowing to catch the first boat in the morning from Morro to Valenca, and recalling a similar scene where a man had run away, but for other reasons.

  Antonio da Cunha Olivera. She had loved the sound of his name. She met him in the first of the two months that she’d been the featured weekend performer at the Seventh Heaven in Montego Bay. Usually she hated performing on the North Coast before the sunburned tourists with their beer bellies and shorts, and some, the Europeans, in sandals and socks. She’d found that most of them had no taste for her kind of music, especially after being fed things like Lord Kitchener’s ‘My Pussin’ – a song about a ‘pussy’, or cat, he had lost.

  But the Seventh Heaven Golf, Tennis and Beach Club was different, with its waterfront villas, acres of land and plants of every kind. There the clientele were the hip rich, and along with the calypso and mento songs, she could sing reggae hits from Toots, Desmond Dekker and the Melodians; most of the other hotels on the North Coast would’ve preferred to be hit by a hurricane rather than to allow reggae or worse, a Rastaman, through their doors. Still she always closed the show with a song she’d learned from her grandmother, and she’d found a way to voice the lyrics so that people listened:

  If I had wings like a dove

  If I had wings like a dove

  I would fly, fly away

  Fly-ay-ay-ay away-ay-ay-ay

  And be-e-e-e at rest

  But since I have no wings

  But since I have no wings

  But since I have no wings

  I have to sing, sing, sing, sing

  If I had wings like a dove …

  The old men in the band loved the song, especially when they were full of rum, and they would put their hearts into the chorus, transcending their straw hats and floral shirts. She herself preferred a simple black or red close-fitting dress, something that went well with her cedar-coloured skin and short jet-black hair.

  One night, as she was drinking lemonade at the bar after the show, he approached her.

  ‘You have a lovely voice.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She flashed him a warm smile and hoped he would leave her alone. After being on stage, she found it difficult to have a normal conversation. The music was still in her head and spiritually she was somewhere else, back in childhood, listening to her grandmother sing ‘If I had wings’ at nine-night, the wake for her father.

  ‘May I buy you another drink?’

  ‘No thanks. I have to leave soon.’

  ‘No encore?’

  She smiled again, as the rush in her head began fading. ‘Maybe tomorrow night.’

  ‘Where can I buy your records?’

  She looked at him fully for the first time. He was about her height, five feet ten inches, with curly dark-brown hair and a square face. She wouldn’t have noticed him in a tourist crowd, but up close he exuded niceness.

  ‘I don’t have any out yet,’ she told him. ‘Next year, though, there’ll probably be something.’

  ‘OK, I shall look out for it. Would you write down your name for me, please?’ He gave her a business card, the blank side turned up. She wrote: Anne-Marie Myrie, handed the card back and he gave her another, this time for her to keep. She looked at the name, more out of politeness than interest: Antonio da Cunha Oliver
a, director. The company’s name was in Portuguese, but with a London post office box address.

  ‘Please let me buy you another drink, just to show how much I liked your singing.’

  Now if she refused it would seem like her mother hadn’t taught her any manners.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘A fruit punch.’ She was going to drink that fast and leave because her feet were killing her in the high heels.

  ‘When can I see you again?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m doing a show tomorrow then I go back to Kingston Monday morning. I have a class in the afternoon.’

  ‘You’re still in school?’ He seemed taken aback.

  ‘University. I’m twenty-one.’ She laughed.

  ‘Ah. What are you studying?’

  ‘Theology. No, I’m just joking. Spanish language and lit.’

  ‘And you sing on the weekends?’

  ‘Yes. What do you do?’

  ‘My company does import and export. We sell a few things to you and buy a few things from you.’

  She didn’t recall seeing any Portuguese products on the island, but she said nothing. In fact she didn’t know much about Portugal except that they’d colonized a lot of countries and treated the people like shit. But she didn’t say that either.

  ‘Sorry, but I have to go,’ she told him. ‘Will you be at the next show?’

  ‘I would love to, but I’m leaving your country tomorrow afternoon because I must be in London on Monday.’

  ‘Well, it was nice meeting you. Have a good trip,’ she said. She knew he watched her all the way to the lobby, so she tried to walk jauntily in the blasted high heels. When she got to the front of the hotel, she quickly jumped into one of the go-carts and eased off her shoes, and the young driver, Trevor, drove her through the cool night air to the beachfront room that the hotel let her have for the weekend.

  Antonio da Cunha Olivera was at the show the next night. Had he missed his flight or what? Postponed, he said, the business is not that urgent. He had put off returning for another five days and moreover he had rented a car. ‘I’ll drive you back to Kingston if you promise to give me a grand tour. Show me the places where the music comes from.’

  At the end of the five days, he left for Lisbon or London, she wasn’t quite sure which, and she went back to Seventh Heaven for another weekend stint. He had promised to come back at the end of the following month, and she tried not to think about it. But he kept his word. They made love on the first night of his return, and he taught her things that made her forget it was her first time. The next day she introduced him to her mother and grandmother, who both took an instant dislike to him. ‘What you see in that white man?’ her grandmother said in front of Antonio, and Anne-Marie hurriedly pulled him out of the house to spare his feelings. But Antonio was amused. ‘She reminds me of my own grandmother,’ he said.

  ‘Does she live in Portugal?’

  ‘She died three years ago.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Grandmothers have a way of doing that.’

  He spent the weekend with her at Seventh Heaven, applauded loudest when she sang, then left again for London. Over the next year, he came back to the island every month, spending five days or a week each time. And like a poor worker looking forward to her pay-cheque, she waited for his visits, living from month-end to month-end. He brought her jewellery and clothes and books on learning Portuguese. She taught him to speak patois and to dance. There was nothing about him she didn’t like, except … except for the way he spoke about Africa and the way he constantly referred to ‘doing business in the Third World’. Jamaica wasn’t third-anything. Where did he get those words from anyway? But their time together was so short that she didn’t want to waste it arguing.

  After Seventh Heaven, she made sure she didn’t have to sing at any hotels, weddings, parties or concerts during his visits. They stayed at a different place each time he came: one week at the Village in Negril, five days at Frenchman’s Cove in Portland, a weekend at Paw-Paw Grove in the Blue Mountains.

  Then the following December, after his visit, she missed a period and it frightened and elated her. She wrote to him at the London post office box saying she had a surprise and couldn’t wait to see him, but he wasn’t able to return to the island until the end of February, and by then she’d had the confirmation. When he came, she booked two nights at the Courtleigh Manor in Kingston so he could rest before they travelled to Mandeville.

  It was in the bathtub at the Courtleigh, soaping each other, that she asked him, ‘Do you notice anything?’

  He smiled indulgently. ‘You’re letting your hair grow?’

  ‘No, no. Look here,’ she touched her abdomen.

  ‘You’ve been eating too much of the chocolates I bring you.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m pregnant.’ His face froze, and her laughter died.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she repeated, staring at him, hoping to see joy.

  ‘By me?’

  ‘Who else?’ her voice came out in a whisper. She felt cold.

  He smiled lopsidedly. ‘There must be doctors who do abortions here, no? How much do they cost? Shhh, shhh, what are you crying for?’

  She got out of the tub and roughly towelled herself off. He did the same. ‘Anne-Marie, listen. A baby would spoil everything. Don’t worry, we’ll find a doctor while I’m here. I’ll pay for everything. You’re too young to start having children.’

  ‘My mother had me when she was twenty.’

  ‘Yes, but that was in the old days. And what about your singing, and university and everything?’

  When she wouldn’t stop crying, he finally confessed: married with children … two … didn’t want to leave his wife … couldn’t live in a place like this … didn’t know she thought the relationship was serious …

  That last bit sparked her temper. She opened the door of the room and began throwing his things outside, in front of the people sitting around the pool. And when he ran out to pick up his suitcase and his Nikon camera, she slammed the door after him, locking him out, leaving him in the spotlight of curious, amused stares. The next morning there was an envelope with several hundred American dollars under her door. He hadn’t even written a note.

  The baby, Michael, was born in early September. Despite the accusations and recriminations (‘Your father would turn in his grave if he could see you like this’), her mother and grandmother immediately took over, and Anne-Marie flung herself back into her singing as soon as she could. She’d only been wasting time at university anyway; her heart had never been in it. By the time Michael was six months old, she had an album out, recorded at Dynamic Sounds, and RJR and JBC competed to see who could play the title track ‘Run Man Run’ the most often. It had a fast dance beat and angry lyrics:

  Run man run

  Run till you tumble dung

  Leave this woman here

  Run back to the one over there

  Leave your pickney behind

  Push us out of you mind

  Run man run …

  She suspected that it was mostly women who bought the record, although men also liked it because it amused them to know that someone was singing of their exploits. She wondered if Antonio ever heard the song, if he knew where the music came from. She never forgave him, but the self-pity didn’t last long because soon Isle Records came courting and she became one of the few women on their label. Back then the sound of the island came from men – singers and DJs; the one glowing exception to the rule had been Millie Small some years before with ‘My Boy Lollipop’. But where was Millie now?

  After a busy two years, Anne-Marie’s music began taking her places, even to countries as far apart in location and feel as Germany and Brazil, eclipse and sunshine. Michael, meanwhile, grew up with two doting mothers … three, when she was at home.

  All in all, it hadn’t been a bad life and it was only lately that she’d started to feel dissatisfied, started to feel out of it. Maybe it was Micha
el’s moving into his own apartment, or the hysterectomy, or the back problem. Or maybe it was seeing Patra on MTV. There was a new generation of singers who weren’t afraid to bare buttocks and belly button, and Anne-Marie thought it was time to be moving on, doing something else. Except that on stage was the only place she felt whole, coherent.

  She had talked to Jimmy Jallah about it when she arrived in Bahia for the music festival. Jimmy had been living for years now in Brazil, where he was a big star, although few people back home spoke about him any more; they thought he had betrayed his roots, not understanding that when someone as expansive as Jimmy is transplanted he has to grow new roots fast or let himself shrivel and drop. Jimmy had grown to love the Brazilian soil and he had suggested she changed countries instead of careers. He’d sent her to Morro to ‘cool out’ and think things over. She hadn’t expected to meet Paolo.

  By eight o’clock, the sun has warmed Morro, and it’s hard to remain inside even for those who feel like hiding. Anne-Marie is more relaxed now, after having had a few hours sleep since the bar closed. Maybe she won’t leave today after all. She takes from her suitcase a slender book of poems, Crown Point, and goes out to the beach chair. Let him see how little he has affected her.

  He’s already there, with three other boys doing capoeira near the water’s edge. He’s much better than the others, in spite of his ‘snake bite’. She’s aware that he’s now showing off for her benefit, walking on his hands for minutes at a time, her neat bandage from last night moving in the air. The others try to do it too but don’t have his stamina. On his hands, he walks over to her beach chair. ‘Bom dia,’ he says upside down. ‘Tudo bem?’ She puts on her shades and focuses on the book.

  ‘I’m sorry about last night. But I don’t see why you got so upset.’

  She ignores him and he finally does a half-somersault and stands upright.

  ‘It’s always better to be protected,’ he says.

  She suppresses a bittersweet smile in the face of such reason. It’s a lesson she should have learned a long time ago. But then there wouldn’t have been Michael.