Pleasantview

by Celeste Mohammed

  Kimberley spent the next day, Friday, in a pissy mood, and it didn’t help that the managing partner kept needling her about a legal opinion for a Hong Kong client. He wanted it by day’s end.

  Things got even worse when, around three o’clock, she said to her secretary, “No, you don’t need another coffee break, Beatrice. I’m waiting on those pages,” causing Beatrice to eye her from head to toe, wheel back the chair, grab her handbag and sashay out of the office saying, “I don’ need dis ras, nuh,” under her breath.

  By five o’clock, Kimberley had two-finger-typed almost seven pages, and was exhausted. Flipping through the scribbles in her yellow legal pad, she estimated at least another forty-five minutes of work … on a Friday evening. If only she hadn’t been so impatient and nit-picky with Beatrice all day! She dug her daily planner from the nest of papers and jotted a note for Monday: Take B to lunch. Maybe buy flowers?

  Needing a break, she turned from the static glare of the screen to stare out the window at the Bridgetown sun: it always shone so fiercely at this hour, clung so desperately to the sky, fighting against its fate—its own nature—just before leaking like an injured egg yolk into the dark porcelain sea. Kimberley never noticed the sun in Trinidad, but now her eyes followed a length of light as it passed through the window bringing a million specks—the fine print of the Universe—to her attention. Rachel was wrong; life was complicated.

  She returned to the computer screen, took a bite of the flying-fish cutter that had been sitting on her desk since lunchtime—the bread now dry and choking. She ate slowly, skimming the last paragraph she’d written: International Business Corporation … Hong Kong resident … Barbadian courts … separate legal personality … Blah, blah, blah. Her brain felt clogged with other, more personal arguments.

  She could not be a lesbian. A lesbian was a woman who habitually engaged in sex with other women. Kimberley didn’t have sex-sex with Rachel, and she didn’t want to have sex with anybody at all. Not that she had anything against intercourse, per se. In fact, had she not met Rachel she would’ve done it by now, with some man. The moment she graduated, Mr. H would’ve found a suitable match for her with some other Syrian duckling—even if he had to import one from Syria itself. Like her older sister, Kimberley had grown up knowing she would have to marry for profit, for dynasty, and she and her husband would have sex for those same reasons.

  But Rachel had changed all that. Their very first time together, Kimberley discovered a power that had freed her, but also frightened her. All the things she didn’t know how to do, things she’d never done before, they soon came naturally as she embraced the delicious, illicit power of devouring another person. To tear at them with your teeth and hands, to pry them open, to spread them wide, to reach until the tip of your tongue discovers their softest core. To take that too: to curl your lips over it and swallow the last of their dignity. To leave them with nothing but their own plaintive cries. To own them.

  Kimberley didn’t want any human being to own her. Not even Rachel.

  The thought made her skin itch. She began typing again, calling out the words, pounding them out on the keyboard and willing herself to concentrate on their meaning.

  Her cellphone rang. Oh shit, Rachel.

  Kimberley let it ring through a few cycles while she steadied her vocal chords. When she did answer, and Rachel said, “He-e-y,” in the lilting way that implied, “I’m sorry and ready to make up,” Kimberley’s pinched shoulders released.

  Rachel knew what she’d done, how unreasonable she’d been.

  “So, Pelican, right, babes? What time?” Rachel spoke in a tone both breezy and strained. She was referring to the pub, Thirsty Pelican, where they sometimes spent Friday evenings.

  But Kimberley wasn’t ready to absolve Rachel just yet. She couldn’t allow her to get away with this: to start a doomsday countdown and then just waltz back in and stop the clock by asking, “Where’s the party?” No, no, no. In a court of justice, Rachel would have to allocute, to spell out her apology. Kimberley was saying all this when Rachel cut her off. “Cor bleh, I did get on like a real cunt, eh. Last night, how I come at you. Sorry, babes. Let we just forget it and got a good time tonight, nuh. That’s what we really need right now.”

  Kimberley smiled and picked up a pen, started sketching on the legal pad. “What we need, Rach?” she said. “Ain’t you didn’t need the scrambled eggs I make this morning? Instead, you leave with your face twist-up, like I make you suck lime for breakfast.”

  In the dead air, she heard Rachel’s struggle for a comeback. Poor thing was never good at witty repartee, and when she gave up and burst out laughing, Kimberley found herself laughing too. And when Rachel said, in a voice crackling with emotion, “Never mind all that, I always goin’ need you,” Kimberley caved.

  Who else would ever say that to her?

  “An hour,” she said, adding some tiny squares of light to the engorged heart she’d been drawing. “I’ll meet you there.”

  When she plopped her brief-bag onto the front seat of the BMW, Kimberley was in a much better mood. She’d convinced the managing partner not to issue the legal opinion until Monday, claiming she needed to check some case-law at the Supreme Court. Rachel was at the bar—she’d already called twice more—and Kimberley was excited to see her and have the scare of the past twenty-four hours put behind them.

  She slid her phone into the dashboard holster and swung out of the law firm’s lot. Not even two streets away, it rang again and she pressed the answer button without looking.

  “Good God, woman. So I tell you 7:00 and you call back at 7:01? You serious?”

  Silence. Then “Kimberley,” spoken by her mother’s glacial voice. “Why haven’t you called?”

  “Mom?” she asked, her mind blank.

  “Your father’s been shot and you don’t call? He’s a politician so I’m sure it’s been on the news there.”

  “What? How?” Her muscles seized.

  “Last night. Do you really not know what happened?”

  “A robbery? Is he dead?” Kimberley swerved the car and parked alongside the Parliament building. A shadow in the guard’s booth moved and she imagined ski-masked bandits storming the cloth-store, kicking in the office door, demanding Mr. H open the safe. That could happen these days. Not in safe little Barbados, but back home, in bloody Trinidad. She pictured Mr. H trying to smooth-talk while reaching for his gun, his giant hands being too clumsy, in the end. The man was a troll, but she didn’t want him dead. She leaned over the steering wheel and put her face within inches of the phone, as if that would help her comprehend what her mother was about to say.

  “No, no,” Mrs. H’s voice got clippy, “it was a … young lady. He’s at Santa Marta Private Hospital.”

  “Ohhhhhh,” Kimberley said, flopping back into the seat. A tiny smile played on her lips. Mr. H being shot by a bandit—that would’ve been cruel. Mr. H being grazed by some little whore—that was comeuppance. “Well, good for her.”

  “Kimmy, don’t be—”

  “Really, Mother. You know he deserves it.”

  “Nobody deserves to be shot. I swear: you can be so selfish sometimes—just like him.”

  “At least the ‘young lady’ had the balls to do what you never could.”

  “Just come home. They say he’s critical.”

  Kimberley didn’t know what to do with the word “critical”—it was more than the bullet-graze she’d imagined. Part of her rushed out like a speedboat, but then stalled, drifting back to indifference—her usual mode whenever she thought of her father.

  “Give me the number for the hospital. I’ll call every day,” she said. She swung the flap of her brief-bag and pulled out the legal pad, still open on that page with her heart-doodles, the pen clipping its side.

  “He’s your father. You can’t really think that’s good enough?”

  Tired of Mrs. H’s sarcastic questions, Kimberley decided it was time to ask some of her own. “Mother, was that fu
n for you? Wearing all those bruises?” she said, seeing in her mind’s eye the fingerprints studding her mother’s neck like a turquoise necklace. “Give me the number, please.”

  “If I can forgive him, why can’t you?” Mrs. H said.

  Kimberley pressed the pen into the page, going over the existing lines and curves of the heart, making them deep and thick. “You should call Miss Ivy too, Mother. I bet she’d be happy to know he’s in critical—”

  “Shut up! Don’t talk to me about silly things you only half-remember.”

  A drop of water fell from Kimberley’s nose, landed on the yellow page, making it swell.

  “Silly? Silly, eh? And half-remember? No, Mother, I remember every detail.”

  Her ninth birthday party. The heel of her plastic, magical pony “high-heels” had broken off and she’d left everyone in the garden and trekked all the way back upstairs to change them. Miss Ivy, their housekeeper, was at the sink. Mr. H stood behind, squeezing her. Miss Ivy thrashed around—a black mouse in a trap—her head almost butting the metal faucet. She begged him, “Mr. H, no … Oh God, please. The Mrs. home …” Although Kimberley hadn’t known exactly what was happening, she’d sensed that her father was taking something Miss Ivy wanted to keep, and she’d felt sad because she knew Miss Ivy would lose it anyway. Just like Mrs. H always lost to him. Women were cursed, Kimberley had decided then: their own bodies didn’t even belong to them. She had run to her room and locked the door. Curled up, under her magical pony-and-rainbow sheets, she had prayed and prayed to fall asleep and wake up a boy. That way, she’d always belong to herself; other people might even belong to her. But Mrs. H came searching for her to rejoin the party. Kimberley told what she had seen and Mrs. H turned whiter, ghostly, but she’d dragged Kimberley back into the garden, whispering through gritted teeth, “You will forget what you saw, you will speak of it to no one, you will smile and finish off this party like a good hostess. Or so help me God, Kimmy, I’ll throw away all those presents.”

  Now, Mrs. H was trying the same bullshit. “The point is, child: if your father dies you’ll regret it. Besides, how would it look if you’re not here? Your sister is flying eight hours from England; you can fly thirty minutes from Barbados. I’ve booked the ticket. Put your ass on that plane tomorrow at 5:00, okay?”

  “I not coming!” Kimberley said, grabbing the phone from the holster and bringing it right to her lips, but Mrs. H had already hung up.

  Tears blurred everything: the street, the inside of the car, Kimberley’s own hand. She grabbed some tissues from the glove compartment, sopped her eyes and blew her nose. The legal pad still sat on her lap, heart all pock-marked with water, ink bleeding in places. It made Kimberley think of the graffiti that once covered her room—her Goth, teenage years. Mr. H had hated all the black, the heavy metal, the androgynous baggy clothes. “W’happen to all the kiss-meh-ass ponies?” he used to rail when he was drunk. “Them kiss-meh-ass ponies on rainbows?”

  From the street, Kimberley glimpsed Rachel. At a cocktail table with some of their friends—Dexter, Carl and that crew—but a little too close to some girl in a yellow jumpsuit so tight it resembled an adult onesie. The girl’s index finger wagged and wagged as she made some emphatic point, and Rachel was being persuaded; her frown and chronic nodding made that obvious. Kimberley had seen this chick circling Rachel before. Together, they looked like they were planning to rob the place.

  She squeezed herself into the room and shouldered toward Rachel, moving on the same adrenaline that had piloted her car since Mrs. H’s phone-call. She felt wide-eyed and giddy, desperate to get Rachel to the quieter side of the bar, to tell her about the shooting.

  “Aye,” she said, touching Rachel’s elbow and waving at everyone else in the cluster.

  “Hey!” Rachel replied, and as she bent for a cheek-press kiss, over her shoulder Kimberley glimpsed Yellow Onesie fleeing.

  Why? She wondered, but had more urgent matters in mind.

  “You actually make it,” Rachel said, hand lingering on Kimberley’s hip.

  “You not gonna believe what happened,” Kimberley said, nudging the hand away, a gentle reminder of the rules of public engagement.

  “Tell me, nuh?” Rachel beamed. Yet Kimberley found herself standing there, tongue-tied. Her lawyer-senses took over and she foresaw that Rachel might ask about facts and emotions Kimberley didn’t quite have. Not yet. Everything about her father being shot was still a swirling, black slurry in her mind.

  She had to say something, though. So she embellished the story about the legal opinion and how she’d tricked her boss.

  Rachel laughed and said, “After all that, you need a drink, babes,” then grabbed Dexter’s arm, propelling him toward the bar.

  Kimberley flashed a smile around, exchanged a few words with others in the group, nodded her head, tapped her feet, tried to enjoy the soca music—new catchy stuff from last month’s Carnival in Trinidad. But she felt tired and locked out of all the merriment, as if she was still in the parking lot looking at everyone through plate glass. She’d told her mother she wasn’t getting on that flight to Trinidad and in her head, playing in a loop, were all the reasons why she was justified. And yet, she felt a niggling doubt. A stray bit of shrapnel, spiraling, etching a tiny but painful track inside her chest. But she was determined not to notice the ache. Thank God, Rachel and Dexter were weaving back to the table.

  Through swords of light and tendrils of smoke, Rachel moved, like a celebrity. Everyone eyed her, while she eyed Kimberley. Their misunderstanding was over, they were Soulmates With Benefits once more. Rachel handed Kimberley a cup of fries; everyone cheered Dexter for balancing the tray of tequila shots all the way from the bar; the group raised glasses; somebody did a countdown and then Kimberley licked the salt, tossed the golden liquid down her throat, and bit hard into a piece of lime. She shuddered at the taste, but felt alert again. Alert enough to focus. On getting drunk. On forgetting.

  After tequila came vodka and they clashed beautifully. Just what Kimberley needed: her mind loose, stumbling around. Unfortunately, it collapsed on the doorstep of an unsolved mystery: that girl, Yellow Onesie. Why had she run away earlier? Why did she keep glancing over all night? What had Rachel told her about them? And it felt like more than a coincidence when, around nine-thirty, Kimberley stepped out of a bathroom stall at the same moment Yellow Onesie did.

  They saw each other in the mirror. The music of the bar reverberated in the packed bathroom and yet they seemed to be alone in a bubble of suspicious silence. The girl smiled and Kimberley tried to, but it came out as a sneer.

  They both reached for the paper towels. Yellow Onesie got there first.

  “You and Rachel,” she said, patting her hands, “you make a fine … team.” Then she tossed the tissue and walked out, swinging her ass.

  Kimberley rushed back to the table. Rachel was dancing with Dexter and Carl—a kind of three-person conga. Kimberley yanked her out and dragged her to the other side of the bar.

  “What you tell that girl about us?”

  “Who?” Rachel asked, wrenching her wrist away.

  “Yellow outfit.”

  “Karen? Nuttin’,”

  “You lying.”

  “You paranoid.”

  For a few minutes, they stood there in the corner, behind a rubber plant, spitting insults in each other’s faces.

  “Okay, okay,” Rachel said, finally. “I did need to talk to somebody and she understan’. She’s the onliest body that understan’ this problem we in.”

  “And what problem is that?” Kimberley shifted her weight from leg to leg, like a boxer squaring up.

  “Same type of relationship, nuh. So she know how it feel.”

  “How what feels? Careful, eh.”

  Rachel took the dare. “To be somebody nasty li’l secret,” she said, then dropped her eyes and fondled a rubber leaf, as if confirming its fakeness.

  Kimberley clamped her palms against her temples, to stop her h
ead from exploding. This coming-out bullshit, again?

  And that word, nasty, and how Rachel had dragged it out, raking the past three years along with Kimberley’s purest intentions through scum and sewer and then flinging them back in her face.

  Kimberley couldn’t bear it. She stabbed a finger—as hard as she could manage—into Rachel’s breastbone, just above all that rosy cleavage, and said, “You can’t play victim with me, girl. I know the truth about you.”

  “What I is, then? To you, Kim? And what’s the truth? I listening. Go ’head.”

  One of Rachel’s dreadlocks had sprung loose from the tie-back, and fallen onto her cheek. She dashed it away, hazel eyes blazing, never more beautiful or more repulsive to Kimberley. “The truth is, Rachel: you’s just a kiss-meh-ass bully. Just like my father.”

  Kimberley left the bar.

  After a long shower, she went out onto the balcony to smoke a cigarette and let the sea breeze slap her around a bit, sobering her. The apartment complex was quiet and dark. Even the sky seemed to be in OFF mode: no stars. A few boats bobbed in the distance, spaced out along the horizon like white traffic dashes on a black road to nowhere.

  Kimberley had spent the whole hour thinking, about her father and about Rachel. Two currents, same gulf, they seemed. Both pulling her down to where she didn’t want to go, but where she sensed all the missing answers were buried and rusting: her memory of the last day they’d all been together.

  She and Rachel had been making breakfast when he’d banged on the door. Kimberley opened but he headed straight for Rachel, yelling, “Get out! Get out!”

  Rachel had turned from the stove, looking to Kimberley for an explanation.

  “I want this Bajan bitch out! Right now,” he’d said. “No wickers on my property! That’s what you Bajans call them, right? Take your despicable habits back to Barbados, young lady. And as for you, Kimberley, I sent you to school to be an attorney, not a big, fat, nasty queer.”