Pleasantview

by Celeste Mohammed

  Mannie parked the truck along a dirt road they would never have found without Omar. Then came a sloping embankment covered in thorny bushes. Their bare arms and legs would’ve been shredded if Omar hadn’t walked ahead, swiping a long cutlass. Then, they stepped out onto a deserted beach that stretched for miles in either direction. Everything was blue-black, making it difficult to distinguish between sand, sea and sky. There was a moon, peeking out behind a buttress of clouds, and the ocean was at full, angry volume.

  “This way,” Omar said. He led them past a crowd of coconut trees, shifting in the night breeze, as if uneasy at the sudden appearance of the men. Like a good host, he pointed to some fallen nuts and promised that, on the way back, he would chop some so they could have fresh coconut water before driving back to Pleasantview.

  For a long time, mostly in silence, the men trudged behind. Then, Mr. Jagroop caught up to Omar. Panting and wheezing, he whispered, “Ahhm … you see that thing you drop off the other day? It looking like every week, boy. You don’t mind?”

  Omar felt himself cringe and then stiffen, as if he’d collected a basketball to the stomach. So it wasn’t over: the whore-house; the hush-money. Every week? No way. He couldn’t do it. And he had no good reason except that it made him feel as if he were right there, watching Mannie hit Consuela and then handing him a towel to wipe his knuckles. Plus, he didn’t want to see her again, couldn’t bear her accusing eyes. He would only go to Consuela again if he could be her white knight. But how? He was just a helpless boy.

  “Well, I …” His Adam’s apple bobbed, but he didn’t have the words to refuse Mr. Jagroop. He squinted into the blackness ahead, searching, desperate now for some sign of a turtle. Anybody could carry an envelope but only he could give Mr. Jagroop a turtle, up close. This, he could offer him this; maybe it would be enough.

  There! Omar stopped everyone and pointed to a dark blur in the distance, midway between the tree-line and the water. He hurried to investigate and then scampered back, waving for the men to follow. They climbed and picked their way along the theatre-like curve of a rock cluster. He took the torch from his pocket, aimed it at the sand below.

  Dev snickered, “W’happen Omar? Like you carrying we in the red-light district, or what?

  Omar shushed him and continued tracing an outline with the torch till their eyes adjusted and the men recognized what lay beneath them.

  There, resembling a big rock itself, was a leatherback turtle.

  At least six feet long, almost as wide, with white specks lining its dark brown skin. Under the red light, it appeared buffed and polished for this big reveal. Its head was about two feet long. Its giant flippers sloshed back and forth, making a sand angel. Omar explained that the animal had finished covering its eggs and was now heading back to the ocean.

  For the next few minutes, the group sat spellbound—even Omar. For him, something was different this time. Maybe he was seeing the turtle through the strangers’ eyes? Or maybe he was different? Not just the scientist’s son anymore, but an expert in his own right—a teacher of other men. He watched the animal’s head poking in and out, hesitant. The creature seemed less powerful than he remembered; more vulnerable, lonely. If poachers came up on this beach right now, nobody could help it. Nobody. The poor thing was driven by this instinct to return to the beach where it was born, to lay its eggs in the same place, to come back home. But what if home is no longer safe?

  The spell wore off. The men came to terms with the turtle’s proportions. It lost all its wonder. Mr. Singh suggested, “Pictures, pictures,” and the group scrambled down the rocks like children on a field trip.

  “No, no. Stay behind it,” Omar called, but nobody listened.

  Dev dug a video camera from his backpack and handed it to Omar with a few cursory instructions and an order, “Film we.”

  Omar felt uneasy. Still, he stabbed the cutlass into the damp sand, took a few steps back, pointed the torch and began filming.

  At first, the men knelt around the turtle at respectful distances. Then they edged closer. When Mr. Jagroop touched the creature’s back, a competition started: Mr. Singh patted the head; Dev held a flipper, trying to wave it at the camera. Mannie sat on the turtle; Dev pushed him off and lay down. The young men began a war of poses atop the turtle while their fathers applauded and flicked away hysterical tears.

  Omar wanted to say something: leatherbacks didn’t have hard shells; the men might be hurting the animal. But he kept thinking it would be over any minute now, that it was just a little harmless fun. Soon, the men did run out of clever poses and Omar was relieved that he hadn’t made a big deal.

  He needed to play his cards right tonight. If he did, it wouldn’t matter so much when he told Mr. Jagroop he couldn’t be their whorehouse bag-man anymore. He would help at the store, with the truck, around the house, even; but he couldn’t help with that other problem.

  The men were circling the turtle like they were at a car show. Omar decided this was a convenient moment to capture the full scenery. He panned the camera left, to the water; up, at the moon; then, a slow three-sixty: mountains, coconut trees, rocks; then he was back at the group. Mr. Singh and Dev were at the front of the turtle, Mr. Jagroop and Mannie were behind. The four men struggled for a grip on the creature as they attempted to move it.

  “Aye! What allyuh doing? Stop! Stop!” Omar cried, running toward them.

  They straightened, chests heaving. Dev said, “Boy, put down the camera and come help we.”

  Mannie said, “Nah, we can’t lift this. Not even with Omar. This thing had to be about five hundred pounds. Let we just forget it.”

  “Not a fuck of that!” Mr. Singh argued, “I hear turtle is the sweetest fish-meat you will ever eat. I ain’t come so far, this hour in the night, to go back without a li’l piece! Is only two flippers we need—look how they big.” He kicked one for emphasis. “We could chop them off just so.”

  Omar’s heart raced. “Mr. Jagroop,” he pleaded, looking to the old man to thwart Singh.

  In a stern voice, Mr. Jagroop said, “Singh, I is a nature-lover. We can’t do the animal that.”

  “Exactly!” Omar said.

  Then, Mr. Jagroop continued, “We have to put it to sleep first. I think we could get a clean lash from here. Pass me the cutlass. In fact, give Omar. He is the turtle man. He go know where the jugular is.”

  Mannie plucked the cutlass from the sand and inclined the handle toward Omar.

  Omar accepted it, shivering with the unwelcome understanding that he’d reached the end of something—everything—and the beginning of something else … what?

  He saw himself raise the cutlass to heaven and throw back his head. He saw it as if he wasn’t doing it. He saw himself lowering the cutlass toward the turtle. He saw a single dark line. But then midway, at shoulder level, he saw silver: moon, glinting on the blade’s edge. A simple rotation of the wrist and now the cutlass was no longer aimed at the animal, but slanted toward Mannie.

  Omar let out a guttural noise—surprising, even to him—and began swinging the cutlass wildly. “Nah! Nah! Not tonight! Nobody touching this fuckin’ turtle tonight! You hear me! No-fuckin’-body!”

  Mr. Singh and Dev leapt in one direction, Mr. Jagroop and Mannie in the other. And, as Omar advanced, they hopped backward, saying things like, “Aye! Cunt-hole, relax nah!”

  “Noooo! Allyuh have to pass through me first!” Omar kept screaming. “Through motherfuckin’-me!”

  Mannie made to challenge Omar with a piece of driftwood but, with one chop, the branch split. At that, the men turned and ran.

  Omar chased them clear past the rocks and out onto the open beach. He would’ve gone further too, but he fell—his body going one way, cutlass the next. He staggered up, found it and began to hack at the sand. Needing to damage something, he ran to the nearest tree and began to chop at the nuts underneath. But they mostly rolled away, evading him.

  He took a mighty swing at the tree, and shuddered as the b
lade imbedded itself.

  All energy drained from him. He had none left to remove the cutlass. He backed away, crying, and sank to his knees.

  They’d tricked him. Made him believe he was bringing them turtle-watching, when all along they’d planned a hunt. Made him believe he could belong with them. He hated the men for raising his hopes. He hated himself for believing. And he hated Mr. Jagroop most of all. For not being the man he expected him to be. For being the kind of man who asked a boy to do his dirty work. For being the kind of man who could kill a defenseless leatherback turtle. A mother that had just laid eggs. If Mr. Jagroop could do that, what else could he do?

  Omar decided he was never going back to the Jagroops, to Pleasantview. Not that night, not ever. He would remain right here, he would stay home.

  Then, he remembered the picture frame.

  He shut his tired eyes and saw it there, face up, in the tomb of his bottom drawer. He knew the photo by heart, all its details: his face, innocent and open; Jacob’s, closed against the world. Maybe he should go back for it? Maybe Jacob had been a better man than Jagroop all along. A worse father, yes; but maybe a better man.

  These were Omar’s watery, receding thoughts, as his eyelids succumbed to fatigue, and a clump of sand rolled from his slackening fist. He spent the night there, next to the rocks, just another blue-black mound between the tree line and the Matura sea.

  White Envelope

  IN THE KITCHEN, SETTING THE table, when I hear Mr. H open the front door. I hear when the li’l metal feet on his briefcase touch the coffee table. I hear the fabric rustle when he pass through the brocade dividing the front room and bedroom; and then I hear the click-clacking when he pass through the beaded curtain into the kitchen. Now he grabbing my waist and biting my neck. “You good to put in house, girl!” he saying. And I giggling, the way I’s always react whenever he trying to sound like he from ’round here, from Pleasantview. Still, the moment he mention putting me in house, my heart start flapping like a hummingbird wing. I can’t wait to tell him the news. My mother say I shouldn’t say nothing; but she wrong—she don’t know the man like how I know him.

  I start dishing out the food and I feeling Mr. H eyes following every which way I turn. He love me, I know it, he does always tell me. And I love him too, in a kinda way. I mean, it hard not to feel sorry for him: the poor man been living a lie he whole life. Except when he here with me. Early o’clock he did tell me the whole story ’bout he and he wife, Joan The Witch. When he was twenty, the marriage get arrange but, because all the money did come from she side, she family treat him like a dog. He stick it out for the children, though. And now, the only reason is because he and The Witch so tangle-up in the cloth business. “Divorces are rare in the Syrian community,” Mr. H does say, “it’s simply bad for business.” But he been putting some money away—for years now—and one day soon he should have enough to say, “Fuck it!” and start a new store and a new life. After all, he only fifty-nine, he always saying. Mr. H come just like me: longing for a new life bad, bad, bad.

  I rest down the spaghetti and ruffle the li’l semi-circle of hair he still have. I watch him make the Sign of the Cross and then he start attacking the food. He does come ’round once or twice a week and, every time, I does make sure and cook something from that Italian recipe book. The one I did borrow from work and photocopy after he did say how much he love pasta. Poor thing: Joan don’t cook, and all he does get home is maid food.

  Slapping the plastic tablecloth now, he bawl, “My God, Gail! This Bolognese is divine.” Then he keep on smiling and watching me over the wine glass while we eating. I want to tell him, I want to tell him, but I know is better to wait till he finish the food and the wine and he in a nice mellow mood.

  “You’re really improving with those … the cutlery,” he say. “Almost natural.” But he don’t know how I did beg my friend, Crystal, to teach me to eat with knife-and-fork; and how much I does practice when I here by myself. I want Mr. H to see I could learn new things, I could blend in good with his lifestyle. Just because I start off in Pleasantview don’t mean I bound to stay here.

  Now, he swallowing the last mouthful. “Well, boy am I glad I came straight here,” he say. “I hate keeping all that cash from the store on me—especially in this neck of the woods—but I was starving and this was excellent, darling.”

  I pour Mr. H a second glass of wine—is his favorite. The name on a paper in my wallet, just in case I ever have to ask somebody in the grocery. But sometimes, while I brushing my teeth, I does pout in the mirror and practice it in a sexy voice: “Bow-jho-lay”.

  He loosen his pants button and push back from the table. He patting his knee. “Come here,” he say, “that meal deserves a kiss.” He licking the last drop of sauce from the crease of his mouth. His tongue and teeth red too, from the wine, and when he flash a broad smile and pull me down in his lap, I don’t know why but my mind run on Dracula.

  I let Mr. H shift me ’round to make room for his pot-belly. “You putting on a little weight?” he ask. He did say the same thing last week but I didn’t take the test then, so I didn’t want to jinx nothing by talking before I was sure, sure, sure. Now I certain.

  “Yeah,” I giggle, “and is all your fault.” I start stroking his scaly white scalp and kissing his forehead. My child-father, my child-father. Look how far we come, nah. Look how I manage to turn things ’round from where we did start off.

  Last year, when I did just get the cashier job in Textile Kingdom, the first impression I did have of my boss, Mr. H, was that he look like a hunchback from the movies. Ugly: short, squat, with pudgy, hairy hands and I could tell the rest of him was cover-up in the same coarse hair. It had a day I went in his office to collect the cash-drawer to start my shift. When he grab me and pull me so, on top his bulging crotch, I was really surprise—I nearly bawl out. But by the time he wrap his hand in my hair and drag my face down to his, I realize what was coming. I let him have my mouth. And when his tarantula-looking hand crawl up under my skirt, although I did stiffen up with fright, I didn’t push it away. And when he bend me over the desk, I just bite my lip and grip on the edge till it feel like the skin over my knuckles was busting open. Yes, I small in body; but I bear that man weight and I never flinch. I did switch-off. I was picturing my mother, Janice, and hearing the advice she did give me the day I leave high school: “Listen, you is a sexy girl; any man go want what you have between your leg. Put a price-tag on it and find a man who could pay that. Don’t be stupid like me and waste your life on no Pleasantview man.” And I was already thinking I would let Mr. H to do this thing again. And again. And again. No matter how he ugly. No matter how it hurting. And I was telling myself is not rape if I could make him pay me for what he take. Make him give me a new life outside Pleasantview.

  I take a deep breath and push the air up my nose-hole, up inside my head, trying to push out the memory of that first, scary time. With the air come Mr. H smell: cigar and dusty cloth. It don’t usually bother me but tonight it upsetting my stomach. I hear that does happen to some women in this early stage.

  He nuzzling my neck, rubbing my back, teasing in his Pleasantview accent, “Is too much nice life. Ain’t?”

  Yes, Mr. H truly, truly give me a nice life over the last year. Soon after that first time in the office, he did make me throw out my room-mate, Crystal, and he start paying the full rent here. Then, Joan The Witch did find out ’bout us so she fire me from Textile Kingdom. Mr. H lie down next to me, that very same night, tracing the star-shape birthmark on my leg. He say, “When I was your age I wanted to be an architect. I designed my house, you know.”

  “For true? It nice, man,” I did say.

  Turning on his elbow and stroking my face, he ask me, “What you wanted to be when you were a little girl?”

  “A chef,” I did say.

  “Yes, I should’ve guessed.” He smile and say, “You do love to cook.”

  Two days after that talk, Mr. H pick me up—not in the
big Benz that Vishnu, the chauffeur, does drive; but in the smaller one he does drive himself—and he take me to meet the Wallaces, the people who own the snackette where I working now. “You will be safe with Uncle as your boss,” Mr. H did say. “He is eighty-something. Too old to pull at you. But if he tries it, let me know.”

  For Carnival, Mr. H parade me, like a beauty-queen, through the VVIP Section of almost every big-shot party. Then, for Easter we went to that hotel in Tobago, where all the foreign white-people does go. Parasail, snorkel—man, I do all kinda thing Joan The Witch never do with the man. “I forgot how to feel like this,” Mr. H did say when we was walking the beach one evening. “She stole my best years. But you, Gail, you’ve given me back my youth.” And for my birthday, just last month, Mr. H give me a ring. Custom-made by his jeweler, he say. A single garnet solitaire—my birthstone—it look like the most perfect drop of blood just happen to land on a circle of twenty-four-karat gold. When he slip it on my finger, he say, “I wish this were a diamond. But one day it will be, my darling.”

  All this in my mind now, as I sitting down here in his lap, and I feeling so excited. No more stepping over shit-smelling drains, no more bullets popping all hours of the night, no more wondering when the garbage truck will pass, no more feeling shame to write my address on a form. Me and my child go be up the hill, on a quiet street, playing on a green, green lawn and just waiting for Daddy to come home from his new store. I will have a proper family. Which woman in Pleasantview have that? No running-down man and showing up on man job to cuss for pampers and milk—none of that for me. I have Mr. H and he have me and we going after that new life, starting tonight. With both hands, I gather up Mr. H cheeks till he looking like a big baby. I lock-on to his eyes, like I’s a doctor checking for cataract.

  “I pregnant,” I say. “Eight weeks.”