Pleasantview

by Celeste Mohammed

  “Who?” Miss Ivy asked. “Oh yes, your grandson. I so accustom calling the child ‘Silence’ like everybody else, I does forget he have a real name, yes. W’happen to he?”

  “He get a work with Mr. H new campaign manager. You know who that is, right?”

  Miss Ivy shook her head.

  “You know him, man! A Indian fella. He own the fruits-place up in the Junction: Plenty Horn or Horn Plenty or something so. He used to be a big UNC man till couple weeks ago. I hear he was even going up for election against Mr. H. But he get catch in some whorehouse scandal, so UNC pull him off the slate. Jagroop, he name.”

  Miss Ivy’s mind flipped back to little Jabari’s story.

  “Anyway,” Agnita continued, “Jagroop switch sides. He turn PNM now. And Silence and them boys been working with him in Mr. H campaign office. At first I was glad; I say Silence might meet somebody to fix him up with a good, steady work. Instead of just liming with them fellas, thiefing fruits and selling them by the traffic lights. But you know what Jagroop, that stink mudder-so-and-so, ask my quiet, gentle grandson to do?”

  “What, girl?” Miss Ivy asked, leaning so far forward the front legs of her chair began to complain.

  “Jagroop pick up the boys yesterday and carry them for a long ride in he fancy truck—like he did want privacy, nah. He say: since UNC shame he and he family, they must lose this election. He say he have a plan, and …”

  Agnita began to sniffle and shake her head, as if she couldn’t bear to explain further.

  While she waited, Miss Ivy clucked her tongue, offered Agnita napkins from the plastic holder on the table, and wondered if her friend knew the talk on the street about Silence: that he wasn’t such a quiet, gentle boy anymore; that he sold something other than fruits now; that he’d recently become a foot-soldier for Lost Boyz gang. Or was Agnita just like all the other Pleasantview mothers and grandmothers? Playing deaf and dumb until they ended up on the news crying, “He was a good boy, you know!”

  Agnita continued in a shaky voice, “The big PNM meeting is next week—the fifteenth. Jagroop paying them boys to shoot at the stage while Mr. H talking. Not to kill him, eh. Just to frighten everybody. Jagroop say it go look like is UNC put a hit on Mr. H and everybody go turn against UNC and vote PNM.”

  “Oh gaddoye!” Miss Ivy felt as if the short, kinky hairs at the base of her corn-rows just went dead straight. “What the ass this Jagroop-fella trying to do? Start a war? Suppose they miss and the bullet catch Mr. H?”

  Miss Ivy had spent her entire sixty-eight years inhaling the rancid drain water of West Pleasantview. She’d lived through more elections and more funerals than most people in this overgrown scrap-yard of a town. But Miss Ivy couldn’t recall, in all her years, a single instance of someone being shot for political reasons.

  “That is why I ask you to walk with your cards and everything,” Agnita said. “I so worried ’bout Silence!” She began wailing.

  Miss Ivy wasted no time. She dug into her purse for the cards and began a long, vigorous shuffling. Her upper lip perspired and the deep furrows of her forehead slipped down to become a visor over her eyes. Silently, she begged God to grant her the gift—just this once—to really see the future. This wasn’t some domestic, who-fuckin’-who bacchanal, her usual fortune-telling domain. This was serious. This could be life or death. For either Mr. H or Agnita’s grandson.

  “You have anything belonging to Silence? Something personal,” Miss Ivy asked.

  Agnita, veteran of these rituals, was ready. “Look,” she replied, “I take this from the drawer. It clean.” From the pocket of her house-dress came a pair of jockey-shorts. Eggplant in color, with white piping.

  Miss Ivy sprinkled the underwear with holy water from a tiny bottle. Then, gripping the crotch, she closed her eyes and began a rolling chant, “O Mother, O Mother! Mother Sita. O Mother! Mother Mary. O Mother! Mother Earth. O Mother!”

  She opened her eyes and grabbed up the deck. Agnita gasped.

  Miss Ivy began flipping cards expertly, making a snapping noise as each left the pack. At the first King, she stopped, studied the card and nodded.

  Pleasantview people loved face-cards. Yes, she’d milk the face-cards for Agnita.

  She flipped again until … a Queen. Then, another King.

  Miss Ivy had enough for a story. She slammed the pack down. “That’s it! The Queen of Hearts—a woman—will come between the King of Diamonds and the King of Spades. The first King is Mr. H—the money-man. Then, you see how a Spade shape like a upside-down heart? That second King is Jagroop—deceitful. But don’t worry, Silence ain’t showing up nowhere in these cards. He safe. Like Jesus briefcase.”

  CORPORAL SHARPE

  Corporal Sharpe raised his palm to silence Miss Ivy. All this shit about cutting cards! Was she playing a game, leading him on? She was talking too fast and acting too cocky. He needed to put her in check.

  “Tanty, wait, wait, wait …”

  “Officer, I swear to God! Jagroop send Silence to shoot Mr. H.”

  “Maybe,” Sharpe said, “but I have questions. Answer honest and I might believe this whole nancy story you come with. But lie, and I will kick you out this station tout suit, you hear?”

  “Ask me, ask me. Anything.”

  Sharpe looked Miss Ivy in the eyes and deployed an old-police tactic. He asked a question for which he already had the answer. “You does really see the future in them cards? Or you is a con-woman? The truth, eh.”

  Miss Ivy’s chest heaved, then she slumped into the chair, arms falling from the desk in a surrendering way. She stared at the ceiling, and answered in almost a whisper.

  “I ain’t no con-woman, officer. Is not as black-and-white as that.”

  In truth, she did know things, she said. But not because she saw them in the cards. She knew because the rumor-mill in Pleasantview was that good, because she was older and wiser than most, and because the best peddlers of gossip were the children she babysat every day. She wasn’t a con-woman, she insisted, because she’d never charged for her services. Those who could afford left a little tip, but the money really didn’t matter. “I just want to help, to lend a li’l guidance,” she said, “and I know Pleasantview people does only take advice if it wearing supernatural clothes.”

  “So you was bold-face lying to Miss Agnita? Your so-called best friend?”

  Miss Ivy met Sharpe’s eyes, but with a glint in her own. “Officer, come nah, man. You woulda do any different? You?”

  Sharpe studied the old lady, tapping the ballpoint pen against his nose. He’d lied plenty times to save his daughter’s, his wife’s feelings. Yes, we could afford med school. Yes, you could start in September. No, I never sleep with that woman. Lying was sometimes the right move when dealing with people you love.

  “Fine,” Sharpe conceded. “But suppose you lying to me now?”

  “The man confess, Officer. To my face, Jagroop admit everything.”

  Corporal Sharpe grew itchy inside his uniform. Jagroop was one of his best-paying Pleasantview businessmen—never late with “taxes”. Every week, Sharpe visited The Horn of Plenty and filled a basket with fruit and vegetables. Like any other customer, he rested the basket near the cashier, Jagroop’s son. The produce was bagged and returned, but always without the Corporal having paid, and always with something extra in one of the bags—“a coil”: a rubber-banded roll of hundred-dollar notes. That was how Jagroop got such zealous police response to shoplifters, and to street vendors trying to claim the pavement outside his store. That was why Jagroop’s customers never got towed from the no-parking zone.

  Yes, Jagroop paid well, but sometimes a man must sacrifice a pawn here, to earn a crown there. If Sharpe was going to serve up Jagroop to The Seniors, he needed more conclusive evidence from Miss Ivy.

  For the first time since the old lady began speaking, Sharpe opened his notebook and uncapped his pen. “Gimme it,” he said. “Gimme every last word.”

  MISS IVY

 
The weather-lady had said that sunrise on March 9th, the day after Miss Ivy’s chat with Agnita, would be at 5:45 a.m. Miss Ivy pressed her fists deeper into the pockets of her fur coat and leaned against the wall, admiring the sky’s transition from black to the crisp blue of a new day. How, she wondered, could that weather-lady know the exact time God was going to hang up the sun? How? Miss Ivy shook her head in awe. What she wouldn’t give to be able to do that, to know the mind of God.

  As the grey blanket fell from Pleasantview, Miss Ivy moved to the lamp post across the street from Jagroop’s house.

  After what Agnita had told her yesterday, she had to see for herself. This “Jagroop”: did he look like the kind of man who’d be as reckless as Agnita described? Miss Ivy could usually spot a son-of-a-bitch if she paid attention. Facial expressions, mannerisms, a kind of impatience in the way they dealt with small things—these signs predicted fuckery in bigger things. She needed to observe Jagroop in his own yard, in the honesty of his private world, before he stepped onto the stage of his shop.

  The two-story concrete house was in East Pleasantview—just as Jabari had said. A cluster of colorful religious flags—jhandis—in the corner, further confirmed Jabari’s story: the man was Hindu. And, one of the vehicles parked on the property was a big, black truck—just like Jabari had described.

  Miss Ivy watched Jagroop emerge into the fenced front yard. He wore full white: a V-neck T-shirt that barely covered his belly and a traditional dhoti below. On his feet were leather slippers. He puttered around. Sometimes she saw him clearly, other times she lost him behind the concrete posts of the wall. She heard the gush of water from a tap a few times; the clang of a bell a few times. Once or twice, her nose picked up the sweetness of incense. Jagroop was doing his morning devotions.

  Miss Ivy wondered what he was praying for, the deceitful bastard.

  Then she felt guilty for the thought. The man was praying. What if Agnita was mistaken about him? Even if Agnita was right, at least Jagroop was a praying man. There was a chance then: to appeal to his conscience, to stop the shooting. She could say she was a seer-woman, that the cards had sent her to warn him. He was Hindu, they believed in animal gods. It wouldn’t be a stretch to make him believe in the god of the cards.

  Jagroop sauntered back into view. He picked up a hose and began spraying two piles of dog shit.

  Miss Ivy crossed the road.

  “Morning, Mr. Jagroop,” she called with more confidence than she felt. “A minute, please.”

  Jagroop’s head whipped around. He frowned, then his eyes fell to her coat. “Wait,” he said, “you’s that babysitter from over-so?” He pointed west. “We don’t need nobody again, you know. My daughter and she baby done gone back New York.”

  “No, Mr. Jagroop. Is not that. I come ’bout something else.”

  Jagroop stopped squeezing the nozzle and walked toward Miss Ivy. The dragging hose gave him a dragon look that made her pores raise and turn bumpy.

  She pressed on. “I know you working for Mr. H now. I used to work for him too. And it so happen, I know people working in your campaign office too. Like Hezekiah Watkins. He is a good boy, you know, Mr. Jagroop. The only help to his grandmother.”

  Still Jagroop said nothing. He began watering the petunias along the walkway to his gate.

  Miss Ivy talked louder, faster. She needed to capture his attention, to lure him closer, so she could reason with him.

  “I’s cut cards, you know, Mr. Jagroop. That’s what I come to tell you. The cards talking. They saying things ’bout the PNM rally next week. Bad things.”

  Jagroop came to the gate. They were now face to face, only the curvy metal in between. Miss Ivy got a blast of minty toothpaste as Jagroop said, “Bad things like what?”

  It was the snarl: the glossy gold tooth, the flaring nostrils while his eyes narrowed to bullet points. That, and the mocking manner: how he threw his shoulders back and thrust out his chest, as if to dare her. Jagroop’s reaction stuck in Miss Ivy’s craw, convincing her that he was indeed a dangerous man. Dangerous to Mr. H, dangerous to Pleasantview.

  “Listen, Mister Gentleman!” she said. “I go make it my business to be at that rally. I coming early to plant my bench near the police-and-them. And if anything happen … if I so much as hear a juice box explode, I going straight to the corporal-in-charge and tell him everything I know ’bout you.”

  “Woman …”

  “And furthermore, after I finish by the police, I coming here by your sweet wife to tell she ’bout you and your nigger-woman, and the nastiness you does have that young lady doing inside that black truck.”

  “Look, haul your mudder-cunt! Now! Before I let go the dog. Move!” At the last word, Jagroop aimed the nozzle at Miss Ivy and pulled the trigger.

  Cold water stung her face, invaded her nose, filled her mouth, and almost took out her eye. She doubled over. She bawled for Jesus. But Jagroop was merciless. Miss Ivy fell backwards from the gate, into the open box-drain where he left her, covered in wet fur.

  CORPORAL SHARPE

  Corporal Sharpe’s mind seemed to have grown six legs and was now skittering around, between his ears. If Miss Ivy’s account was true, then Jagroop hadn’t actually confessed to anything, but he had acted very guilty. No doubt, he was involved in the shooting.

  Miss Ivy was in the toilet—had been for some time—and while he waited, Sharpe re-read his notes, comparing all he’d heard to what he’d read in the Station Diary: female suspect and pistol seized. Yet, the only female Miss Ivy had mentioned was old Agnita.

  By the time the bathroom door slammed, Sharpe had decided on his final move.

  “Bonjay-O!” Miss Ivy said, announcing her return. “This shooting thing had me cork-up since last night, Officer. Nerves, nah.” She plopped into the chair and let out a big sigh. “So what now?” she asked, drumming the desk with fingers resembling ginger root.

  Sharpe glared at the old lady until she began to fidget with his pencil-caddy.

  Then, he slammed his palm unto the desk, making her startle. “Alright, Tanty,” he said. “Your confession now. You knew what Jagroop was planning. And you did nothing? You didn’t tell nobody? Allyuh woman love to talk. If you didn’t want the man dead, you woulda tell somebody. I feel you holding out on me. You protecting somebody. I want to know who. Who did you tell and who else is involved? And remember: one lie, and you lock-up for wasting police time.”

  MISS IVY

  The day after Miss Ivy’s visit to Jagroop, she buzzed at the double-gates of Elysium, the Santa Marta mansion of Mr. H. She’d wanted to get there earlier, to be alone with Mrs. H, but she’d struggled to find a taxi willing to come up the mountain on this rainy day. Miss Ivy arrived feeling hurried, unsettled for the task she’d set herself.

  The weekly fortune-telling-tea-party had just begun, yet the ladies were already onto their second bottle of wine. They were already giggly, behaving like teenagers. Some sat with bare feet tucked under, others draped themselves across patio chairs. With their lightish skin, teased hair and black-rimmed eyes, they looked to Miss Ivy like a harem of old-ass Cleopatras. Wine glasses swirling, they cheered for Miss Ivy when she appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and patio.

  There was a loud creak as Mrs. H shut the oven and said, “Ivy, darling, I thought you’d forgotten us.”

  Miss Ivy spun around. “No, no, Mrs. You know Ivy would never do that. Once Ivy say she comin’, bet your bottom dollar she comin’. I ready to start. Come, nah?” she said, talking too fast, babbling like the children she babysat.

  Mrs. H answered, “Go ahead, I’ll just be a minute,” while she fussed with oven knobs.

  Miss Ivy hurried into Mr. H’s den, where she conducted her sessions. It was the perfect setting: heavy drapes, dark wood and the amber shadows from an antique lamp. Today, though, Miss Ivy’s hands shook as she set up the cards she’d prepped and practiced with last night.

  The plan was simple: convince Mrs. H her husband was in mortal
danger and that, according to the cards, March fifteenth was an unlucky date for him to appear in public. Wasn’t that the truth? So why was she so nervous? She stared at the door, crushing the empty card box while she waited for Mrs. H. Would the cards stick? Would she drop the pack and throw everything out of sequence? In all her years of “seeing”, Miss Ivy had never before worried about these things. She’d always been confident, but now she felt her palms growing more and more clammy with every passing second—as if she was balling toolum, molasses candy.

  Confidence was King, she reminded herself. A long time ago, she used to wonder why Mrs. H collected paintings and sculptures of black people all over the house. It took about a decade, but then Miss Ivy figured it out: Mrs. H felt black people were mystical in some way. Closer to God or something. Just put on a colorful head-tie and talk mumbo-jumbo with confidence and Mrs. H bought in. Yes, confidence was King.

  Like that time when their daughter, Kimberley, was little and had spied Mr. H trying to bend Miss Ivy over the kitchen sink. She had radiated only confidence when she swore on her ancestors’ graves that she’d been choking on a chennette seed, and that Mr. H had been saving her life. Mrs. H had believed.

  And all the other times, when Mrs. H had gotten whiff of Mr. H’s womanizing. Miss Ivy would always listen with a flat, blank face and then work the cards to comfort the woman. Miss Ivy felt responsible not only to keep house, but also the family’s secrets and domestic peace. She didn’t want to work for a divorced hag—Pleasantview people respected you more when you worked for a proper Santa Marta family.

  Mrs. H entered into the room, took a tired breath, then wilted onto the tufted sofa where Miss Ivy sat. The leather made a farting noise, which sapped the power of the moment and eased the tension in Miss Ivy’s nerves.

  Mrs. H gave a hand flick, to signal she was ready.

  First, the opening chant, then Miss Ivy picked up the cards. She flipped and flipped until the King of Clubs appeared. She turned the next card: as planned, it was the Two of Clubs.