Pleasantview

by Celeste Mohammed

  “No, we’re not …” Kimberley began. Rachel hadn’t yet kissed her. She hadn’t yet taken Kimberley’s wide, awkward hand and guided it down to the narrowness between her legs. None of that had happened yet. They were innocent.

  Yet Mr. H cut Kimberley off. “Save it,” he said, “I own this shittin’ place, I know everything that happens here. And for godsake, you let the maid find you together? You know how those nigger-people talk. By now, the news must be all over Pleasantview.”

  That’s when Kimberley understood his accusation. A couple days before, she and Rachel had been up late, eating popcorn and watching DVDs. They’d fallen asleep right there, on her bed, and that’s where the maid had found them the next morning, entangled.

  Kimberley tried to explain this to Mr. H but he grabbed Rachel’s arm, dragging her toward the door, saying, “They’ll use this, Kim, mark my words. You will make me a laughing stock in Pleasantview, you stupid cow!”

  Peeling his fingers from Rachel proved impossible; he was too strong. So Kimberley grabbed the broom and, for a millisecond, she did hesitate, but then she struck him hard on the collar-bone. With a howl, he released Rachel and swatted Kimberley halfway across the room. Everything happened in slow motion next: Rachel crawling across the tile, lifting the hem of her nightie, dabbing Kimberley’s lip, printing bright red spots on Tweety Bird’s faded feet.

  “I want her out. Today,” Mr. H had panted over them, mouth wet, face rabid.

  Kimberley’s insides had roiled as if she were on the verge of a diarrhea.

  “If she leaves, I going too!” she had sputtered, the words salty with tears, snot and a little blood.

  “Do it,” Mr. H had warned as he stalked off, “and you’re dead to me, young lady.”

  He’d left the door wide open.

  The click-clacking of the locks made Kimberley startle.

  Rachel was home from the pub. Although Kimberley felt softer toward her now, after reliving that memory, she didn’t want to talk just yet.

  Please head straight to your room! But no … kitchen noises: water gushing, china rattling, kettle gurgling. For what felt like forever, Kimberley sat there in hostage mode, staring at the balcony curtains, willing them not to betray her. Then, a gust lifted the gauzy panels into the living room, caused them to curl and beckon like fingers and not long after that, Rachel stepped out onto the balcony.

  Kimberley got up and walked to the railing. The wind had died and the sea had returned to a patient mumble. She needed to speak first now, to control the conversation. “Dad was shot last night,” she said into the blackness before her.

  Rachel’s chair—or maybe the table—screeched. “You mekkin’ sport?”

  Kimberley turned, but her hands clutched the railing behind her. She took a deep breath and told Rachel about the phone call from Trinidad.

  Rachel set her teacup down. “I so, so sorry,” she said, flapping her hands as if she were overheating and needed to self-cool. “That’s what you was trying to tell me? Earlier, nuh?”

  When Kimberley nodded, Rachel rushed over, hugged her, whispered more sorries, then led her inside to the couch, pulled her down and cradled her head. The touch was innocent and undemanding. Kimberley closed her eyes and tried to let every hard feeling dissolve in the warm silence between them. They had survived so much together.

  “So when you leaving?” Rachel asked, twisting a curl of Kimberley’s hair.

  “I’m not.”

  “But you just say he critical.”

  “I’ll see him at the funeral.”

  “You mad? He’s your father.”

  “After how he’s treated you … us … why are you on his side?”

  “What the rasshole! The man deadin’. This ain’t ’bout tekkin’ sides, Kim.”

  “You sound just like Mom.”

  “But—”

  “Look,” Kimberley said, raising herself and her voice, “it’s my father, my conscience, so thanks for your concern, but I can make my own decisions.”

  Rachel bared her palms in surrender. “Awright, I can’t force you,” she said. “Whatever you choose, babes.”

  Kimberley lay back down and they settled again, Rachel twirling Kimberley’s hair and rubbing fingertips into her scalp. Kimberley shut her eyes and felt her whole blunt bulk lifting and floating with each breath. She was one of those boats out there, lolling in the tide, seaweed trailing and caressing its sides.

  “Life so fleckin’ short, eh?” Rachel interrupted. “I cyah imagine Daddy gettin shot. Or Mummy dyin’ so sudden. Them is the onliest thing I love in this life—and you, of course. Nobody else. Please, Kim, let we just go tomorrow, nuh? Let we just do that one thing for now. I ain’t goin’ say nuttin. I promise, babes.”

  Kimberley was tired. She didn’t want Rachel to pull away. More than anything, she wanted to be smothered, until she couldn’t breathe, until she blacked out and forgot herself, her mother, her father—every damn thing in Trinidad. She reached up for Rachel’s neck and drew her down.

  “Okay,” she whispered as they kissed, “Whatever you want.”

  Lunch had been pleasant and light-hearted—no pressure at all—and it was difficult not to like Rachel’s modern parents: Mrs. Clark, a kaftan-loving Swede who taught Feminist Studies at the University, and Mr. Clark, a stately black man—a dentist—who grew taller every time Rachel said “Daddy”.

  After they had cleared the dishes into the kitchen, Rachel smacked Kimberley’s ass with a tea towel and said, “Let we go for a walk, nuh?” and Kimberley agreed.

  They picked their way down some steep stairs to the beach and, on the last crooked step, Rachel grabbed Kimberley’s hand, counted to three and ordered, “Jump!” They raised a puff of white sand as they landed, then Kimberley chased Rachel to the shade of a coconut tree.

  They sat, catching their breath on a sun-bleached log, while Rachel coiled and coiled the pendant on her coral necklace—something she only did when she was nervous. Kimberley was about to ask what was wrong when—Duff!—a coconut dropped from the tree. They both ducked at the sound, and Kimberley cringed inside because it reminded her of Rachel’s head hitting the floor on Thursday night.

  “You think we should move?” she asked, but no answer came.

  “I tellin’ them,” Rachel blurted out. “Now that we here and I see you with them, Kim, I know is the perfect time. Let we just do it.”

  Kimberley grabbed a stick and began drawing on the sand. Her heart and mind raced but went in different directions. She found herself tracing a big smiley-face, perhaps to distract from her own face, which she could not trust to convey the right reply to Rachel. What was the right reply? She flung the twig away and made her eyes scour the beach for some anchor, some mooring. There! A woman on the jetty to their far left, the breeze on her long-sleeved blouse made her appear to be shivering. Or there! A tall, Nordic-looking woman strutting toward them, topless, her areolas like red cocktail umbrellas. This kind of exposure could only happen in Barbados, never, ever in Trinidad.

  “Let’s do it,” Rachel repeated.

  Kimberley spoke, then, in a strangled voice, “You promised me.” She wasn’t angry—which surprised her—just scared; there was a gun to her head, it seemed.

  “Is the onliest way we goin’ be happy, babes. We gotta be together in the open now,”

  “But I don’t need that, Rach. All I need—”

  “But you love it, though.” Rachel made a fist on Kimberley’s thigh, and beat out a rhythm as she continued, “Yeah, when you lickin’ and fingerin’ me. Cor blimey! You love that cunt! You does try to hide whenever you comin’; you think I don’t know … but I know, yes. You love it. You’s a bare feckin’ wicker, just like me. Admit it!”

  “Is that bitch from the pub, right?” Kimberley knocked Rachel’s hand away. “Karen? She’s putting you up to this? You fuckin’ her or what? Don’t tell me you’re so stupid you can’t see what she’s trying to do to us?”

  “No,” Rachel said,
“You’s the problem, Kimberley. Three fleckin’ years: waitin’ for you to stop hidin’ yourself, waitin’ for you to be ready. That finish. I tell you: I ain’t hidin’ nuttin’ no more. I ain’t waitin’ again.”

  She got off the log and stood over Kimberley.

  With upturned hands, as if the air around them was collapsing, Kimberley pleaded, “What you want from me, girl? Blood? I can’t!”

  Rachel glared down, silent and goddess-like with the sun behind her; only her tears moved. Kimberley tried to match the stare, but looking up like that, into the light, made her eyes sting and weep. She lowered them to the turquoise sea, a glistening sheet of glass that stretched out to oblivion.

  Rachel moved, offering her hand. “Are you coming?” she said. Her face, craggy and foreign. Her voice splintering as she added, “Please?”

  A feeling swept over Kimberley, the same feeling she remembered from so long ago, when she’d watched her father with the sapodilla tree. A revelation, uncluttered by the fine print of life, of how deeply she loved this other failed human being. Then, in the same moment, the feeling seemed to crest and topple over on itself, draining away, as she glimpsed afresh the hopelessness of loving anyone that much, the inevitability of disappointment, the terrifying pain.

  A knot loosened and something inside Kimberley slipped away and drifted off toward the horizon’s sheen. She glanced at her watch, rising from the log as she whispered, “I going, Rach. I need to go back home.”

  Rachel began to cry some body-wracking sobs. “Is Trinidad you mean? You leaving me, Kim? You leaving me, nuh?”

  Kimberley wrapped her arms around Rachel, rocked her as if they were slow dancing—right there, out on the open beach, for anybody to see. She didn’t know if she was leaving Rachel. All Kimberley knew was that she could never live a new life, never have a new home, until she went back and spoke with her father.

  She loved him. She needed to tell him—as soon as possible—and give him a chance to learn why the kiss-meh-ass ponies had died.

  Loosed

  “THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE WEARING?” RUTH ASKED.

  Declan had known his wife would be watching, in her dressing-table mirror, as he left the bathroom. Watching, waiting to criticise. He’d known. And yet he went ahead anyway. He chose a pair of faded, ripped jeans and a green STAG T-shirt with the slogan—A MAN’S BEER—in fat, white print. It was his opening salvo.

  “What wrong with this?” He avoided Ruth’s eyes as he sank to the bed to pull on his loafers.

  “Declan, it’s a church service. What will Bishop and the elders think?”

  Left shoe on.

  “Well, ain’t the Bible say, ‘Render your heart and not your garment’?”

  Right shoe on.

  “No, that’s not what it—”

  Declan sprang up. “Listen, my clothes wouldn’t matter to Christ. Only to fake-ass Christians.” He glared at the mirror, where their images were frozen. “So let’s see which kind we dealing with tonight.”

  Today was their wedding anniversary. Ruth had asked him to go with her to Night Service at Pleasantview First Holiness Revival Church, a Pentecostal circus just like the one his grandma used to drag him to as a boy. Ruth had often invited Declan to church. He’d refused every time. But today, he had to go.

  Going to church together was what decent couples did to mark fifth anniversaries. This was what was expected. To not go tonight would be an outright announcement, to everyone in Pleasantview, that he and Ruth weren’t the upstanding schoolteacher couple they appeared to be. He and Ruth had been the first in their families to earn degrees: he, Chemistry; she, English. They’d been the first in their families to get married—not like his sister, Judith, who’d shacked-up with her kids’ father for seven years until he left to work in America. Declan and Ruth had been the first to move out of the ghetto—even if it was just across the traffic lights, to Hibiscus Park. Every time they went back to Pleasantview to visit friends and family, it was as if those people in the dark were seeing a great light. “Morning Miss, Morning Sir,”; everyone greeted them by their schoolteacher titles. But it was hard being a shining example. And, every so often, it demanded a sacrifice. Like tonight.

  “You know, Bishop predicted you would behave so,” Ruth said, resuming whatever it was she did these days at her dressing table.

  Declan stared at the reflection of his wife’s face. A forty-two-year-old woman who no longer wore makeup, perfume, or jewelry. All those little tell-tale signs of effort, they signalled to a man that his woman still craved him. To Ruth’s church, though, they signaled the sin of “vanity”. Tonight, Declan would show those damn church-people how little he thought of them—they weren’t even worth a pair of slacks and a dress-shirt—and he would expose them to his wife. He would use this opportunity to finally make her see: these “saints” were just plain old sinners in sheep’s clothing. She was better off without them.

  A few years ago, back when her name was still Michelle—she’d actually changed it because “hell” was in the middle—this business of getting dressed would’ve gone so differently. Declan would’ve readied himself first, then rushed into the living room to wait. He would’ve been watching TV half-heartedly, eager to see her emerge from their bedroom, to see what she’d done this time. What dress? What hairstyle? What colour lipstick? What shoe—the slutty platforms that made her taller than him, or the black, strappy ones that made her feet look like they had on lingerie? His pulse would’ve matched the rhythm of her heels down the corridor. When she finally appeared in the living room, though, he would’ve played it cool, dragging his eyes from the TV. She would’ve stood in the usual spot—between the love seat and the single chair—where she knew he’d have an unobstructed view. Then she would’ve asked casually, “You ready, Deck?” He would’ve smiled and nodded with his reply, “Not as ready as you, babes.”

  Now, he dropped his eyes from the mirror and walked over to the dresser for cologne. Ruth held the bottle out, as if she was doing him some great favour. He took it, making sure not to touch her hand. He wished he could, though, and wished that, by that one touch, he could exorcise Ruth completely from Michelle’s body. Then he would have a reason to go to church and he would hold her hand the whole time, thank Jesus with all his heart, then take her to dinner afterwards. A fancy knife-and-fork dinner, just like old times.

  God knows, he and Ruth hadn’t gone out together in what? Years: two, three, maybe?

  He knew the things people said, how they called him “understanding” for letting Ruth pursue her “path” even though he “believed differently”. The truth was Declan had been betting all along that Ruth’s faith was unsustainable—an experimental flash of fire, like that trick he did in the science lab: potassium permanganate and glycerin. Poof! Over.

  With time, though, an uninvited blackness, like mold, had over-run his hope. This might not be a passing phase. This might be a transmutation. His wife, Michelle, might be permanently gone. In her place, this Bible-thumping freak named “Ruth”.

  “Why you have to be such a damn groupie all the time?” Declan snarled at her. “Who cares what your precious Bishop predicted? Ain’t we agree I could wear anything I want?”

  He had sensed himself growing desperate lately, as this fifth anniversary approached. He hadn’t known what to do about it, right up until fifteen minutes ago when he was in the shower. That’s when he decided tonight was the night. He would bring Michelle back—shock her, talk sense into her, ridicule her—he’d take action, tonight.

  “Yes, but I didn’t expect something so … demonic,” Ruth replied, stabbing another pin into the coil of hair at her neck. She seemed to flinch and then bleed a smile—just for a nanosecond—at each stab, like she was enjoying a medieval penance. Declan let out a long, juicy steups and left the bedroom. This was why he needed his outside-woman, Trudy: a normal, sane female to balance off this madness.

  In the corridor, he had a wicked thought that made him veer into the living
room to squint at the CD rack. Ah! There: “Dancehall Mix”. A disc he’d bought on a whim, about a year ago, at the Pleasantview traffic-lights, from a scraggly boy named Silence. Declan had listened to it scornfully at first, had endured the merciless bass, the cussing, the crudeness: punani this, cocky that, ride-ride-ride, fuck-fuck-fuck. It wasn’t really his thing: he was a smooth, sophisticated man; a jazz-and-R&B kind of guy. He kept listening to this CD, though, because at the time, he’d felt like he needed to. All over Pleasantview, young fellas were in their cars pounding out these styles; and in clubs, pushing up on girls to these beats; and in their tiny bedrooms, stinky with sweat, sports, semen and never-washed sheets, banging girls to these rhythms. Declan used to be one of those invincible boys. But at forty-three, the way his life was going with Ruth, he’d felt he needed to borrow some of that fire, to remember what it was like to be ablaze.

  The CD had stayed in Declan’s car for about a month, became the soundtrack of his drives to and from school. The “fucks” stopped grating and he learned the other lyrics without even trying. Then one afternoon, Trudy, the much-younger-History-teacher-with-no-man, had car trouble so he offered her a ride. The music came on full blast and she looked at him like he was a pervert, like she was ready to report him to the Principal. Declan had fumbled with the volume knob and eject button. “Sorry, sorry,” he’d stuttered, tempted to crack the disc in two. Trudy had smiled in a pouty way and said, “You’re versatile, Mister Rochard.” It was a dare: you’re old, but are you cold?

  Declan plucked the disc from the shelf and headed to the car to wait for Ruth. So, he was demonic? Fine then. He would go to Night Service with her but, on the way, he’d teach her what demonic really sounded like. Fuck her, fuck the Bishop, fuck all the elders.