Pleasantview

by Celeste Mohammed

  Declan slowly came to. Where was he? Had he fallen asleep on the carpet in front of the TV? Above, one face: Michelle. She kissed his forehead. He lay still and smiled at his love, his eyes finding their focus.

  Then she said, “Praise God,” and Declan sat up as if released by a spring.

  It was slow and fast at the same time: the remembering, the feeling of having his insides scalpelled out, of losing Michelle again. There was only Ruth, stroking his face and saying, “It’s okay, babe. You were slain in the Spirit, praise God.”

  Grief, hot and red, rushed through Declan. He wanted to cry. He wanted to howl. He wanted to rip his clothes. He tried to stand. Yolande and Ottley rushed to help, cooing and lifting him by the underarms like a newborn. Declan shoved them away, handed Ruth the car keys and staggered out of the tent.

  The CD player remained off. Ruth was driving. Her voice filled the car as she tinkle-tinkled like an over-wound ballerina, whirling to her own distorted melody.

  Declan sat in the passenger seat, taut and still tightening. His mind strummed one chord, the same chord: apology, apology. She owed him an apology. For tricking him into attending the service, for having the pastor and her friends ambush him, for them crowding him till he couldn’t breathe, or hitting him on his head—or whatever they’d done to get him on the floor like a blasted fool. For the past three years. For everything.

  “So what did you see?” Ruth asked, reaching across to squeeze his hand.

  “What?”

  “When you were out? What did the Holy Spirit show you? The apostle John saw the whole of the Book of Revelation. There’s no shame in it; you can tell me.”

  Declan withdrew his hand, gripped his knee.

  “But some people don’t see anything,” she continued. “It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that tonight, you received Jesus as your Lord and Saviour. When you were on the floor and I was holding you and Bishop asked, I heard you say yes. Things will be different for us now, Deck. You’re a new man now.”

  The high green walls and electronic gate of Hibiscus Park came into view, about fifty feet ahead. Ordinarily, Declan would’ve picked up the gate remote by now. Forty feet. He would’ve pressed it by now. Thirty feet. But this time, he said, “Stop, stop, stop.”

  Ruth mashed down on the brakes, looking worried.

  “Pull over and park,” he said.

  She did, then leaned toward him. “You want to throw up? That happens to some people after …”

  Stabbing the switch for the overhead lights, Declan said, “At first, I really thought this was a phase, you know, Michelle.”

  At the sound of her old name, she recoiled into her seat.

  “Yeah, for this conversation, you’re Michelle—you can go back to being whoever you want after.”

  Declan felt he was sitting on top of something huge and powerful, gripping its reins, trying to restrain it before it trampled them both into the mud.

  Yet his wife stared at him exactly the way some of his students did in class, uncomprehending: forehead twisted and knotty. And, just as he did with them, Declan tried not to doubt himself.

  “I thought it was all about that last … loss … after we were trying so hard. Maybe you thought God was punishing you? Or maybe you thought if you prayed harder He would do something for us? I didn’t know for sure, but—”

  “Did you ever ask?”

  “Michelle, I ask you all the time why you’re hiding in that Church!”

  “No, did you ever ask me how I felt about what happened?”

  “Well, I could see you were sad. That’s natural. But, each time you got over it, went back to normal. I figured that last time would be the same. That’s why I thought—”

  “You blamed me, ain’t? You decided something was wrong with me. You resented me,” she said, voice quivering.

  “Come on!” he urged through gritted teeth. He didn’t want to answer that question, to put himself in the wrong. Not when he still had so much righteous steam to vent.

  “Yeah,” she said, her features curdling, “that’s exactly what you said that last time. When I was on the toilet crying my guts out? You said that same thing: ‘Come on’, like I was being melodramatic.”

  Declan made a steeple with his fingers. “Michelle, you know I was disappointed too. I just meant we could try again. I didn’t know what else to—”

  “We did. Remember? At least I did. I tried again.” She looked past Declan, as if there was something out there behind him. He had to stop himself from glancing over his shoulder. “But anyway,” she continued, “God knew what he was doing. You weren’t ready to be a father; you could barely be a husband.”

  Declan grabbed the hand-brake. She was right but he didn’t want to hear it out loud. From her, all he wanted to hear was sorry. With his thumb, he began a secret, manic clicking of the engage button. “Oh! Is so? Well, tonight your precious know-it-all Bishop said plenty ’bout being a proper wife. When last you behaved like that? When last you had sex with me?”

  “When last you had sex with someone else? That is the question!” She flung the car door open and got out. For a few seconds, she stood there in the middle of the road, as if trying to decide what to do next. Then she headed for the pavement. As she rounded the front of the car, Declan leapt out and blocked her path.

  He put his hands on her shoulders. She tried to shrug them off but Declan wouldn’t let her. They began to struggle. Right there, under the street lamp, in the shadow of the mint green walls of Hibiscus Park, mere feet from their own gate. They wrestled and clawed at each other. Neither spoke, but breathy grunts escaped them as she pushed and he pulled. He got hold of her wrists and clamped them behind her back. She kept writhing, she was slippery, she tried to bite him—his chest—but then Declan felt her give up and go limp in his arms.

  Cautiously, he let her go. She was panting. Her expression was softer than it had been in the car, her eyes milky. She shifted, her fingers landing like a butterfly on Declan’s cheek as she said, “All this confusion, we could put it behind us now, Deck. Tonight changed everything. We should go inside and … be together. Whatever was wrong with you down there—it’s healed.”

  Declan’s hand shot out. He slapped his wife with a force that flung them apart: her against the bonnet of the car, him against the green wall. His eyes searched the pavement in a panic, as if it wasn’t he who’d done it, as if there was some invisible, malevolent spirit to blame. But, no, they were alone. Declan turned from Ruth then, began stomping down the pavement, away from the car, back the way they’d come, toward Pleasantview. Soon, he was running, sprinting: chest up, fingers pointed, heart pounding. The closest place was his sister Judith’s house. Small, cramped with her two boys, but tonight it would do. God! What Ruth had done to him in the Church! What he’d just done to her! Declan knew he had to go. He had to leave the townhouse tonight, tonight, tonight. He had no choice. He no longer knew the people who lived there.

  Six Months

  WHEN OIL DROP TO 9US$ A barrel, man, you know you getting lay off. The only question is when. Like everybody else in the industry, you wait.

  It come like the worst thing that could happen, when they announce people going “in tranches” every month.

  At first, every time you don’t get a envelope, you breathe a sigh of relief. After a while, though, you start feeling like a death-row inmate in a cell near the gallows; like these bitches want you to witness everybody else execution. Soon, the fact you still working come like a noose swinging in front your face, grazing your nose. You start to wish they just get it over with.

  And when it happen, you rush home to Judith, your common-law wife, mother of your two children, and give her the news. She put her hand on her heart and say, “We could breathe easy now, Junior. We could move on.”

  You and Judith cling to each other there in the kitchen. You feel your prick resurrecting like Lazarus. Is months since the last time. You know Judith feeling it too. She pulling away? No, she gr
ipping on tighter.

  You’s a trembling schoolboy again, mouth watering over hers as you grab deep inside that housedress like is a bran tub. You find her panty-crotch and rake it aside. Right there on the counter, next to the toaster, it happen. Two jook and a tremble and everything done. But Judith don’t seem to mind. She patting your back, stroking your hair, till your breathing slow down. Then she whisper she going for the boys.

  You swagger to the bedroom. Dive on the bed, hug the pillow, and smile. You not too worried. The severance pay was a good chunk—it’ll hold you for a while. Besides, you tell yourself, it don’t matter how low oil go; Trinidad need man like me. They can’t shut down every rig, every factory. Nah! METs will always find work.

  But then April turn to May, May turn to June, and still nobody hiring Mechanical Engineering Technicians. The talk everywhere is recession, recession. Judith still have her receptionist job in the doctor-office and y’all could probably manage a li’l while longer. But what really starting to hurt is your pride. You’s a big, hard-stones man and watch you: every day, waking up with the house empty and a note from Judith on the table. Cook, clean, wash, iron—you do everything she say.

  Until one night, when Judith squat over your face and say “suck it,” you shove her off and say, “Suck it your damn self. I’s not your bitch.”

  You call your cousin Rufus, in New York. America have the most factories. Rufus name “citizen”; he must know somebody to offer you something under the table.

  Three days later, he call back. Good news. If you organize your visa and ticket and get there by September month-end, they’ll squeeze you in at the S-Town Supermarket near his house in Queens. “Engineering work?” you say. And the man say no, is the meat room. You tell Rufus, “Yeah,” but, same speed, you hang up and tell Judith, “He mad or what? I have education!”

  You plan to wait couple weeks, then say you didn’t get the visa. Meantime, you drop your tail between your leg and call your eighteen-year-old baby sister, Gail.

  “You think you could ask that old man something for me?”

  “A job, nah?” Gail say, like she was waiting on the call.

  “Yeah, girl. Things hard. You know I’s not the kind to ask Mr. H for favors. But them Syrians, they own everything. See what you could do, nah?”

  Imagine you asking Gail for help. After you never do one ass for her. After you did move out and leave her with that drunk skunk, your father, Luther Sr.

  When she first hook up with Mr. H, that married asshole, it did make you feel to vomit: your li’l sister spreading her legs for him, for his money. You did tell Judith as much and she say, “Well, talk to Gail. You’s she big brother.”

  But you did say, “Nah, is not my place.” And is true. Gail was fuckin’ for betterment. How you coulda ever face her and say, Don’t, when Mr. H was the one minding her: putting a roof over she head, food on she table, clothes on she back, making she feel classy, giving she a start in life. That’s more than you—Mr. Big Brother—or your waste-a-time father ever do for the li’l girl. Shame!

  Next day, Gail call back: “Sorry, boy. Hard luck.”

  You wonder if she even ask.

  One night, after everybody fall asleep, you packing away the school books your son Jason leave on the dining table. Flipping through his sketch pad, a heading in red catch your eye: “My Family.” Four stick figures in scratchy crayon clothes. You’s the tallest and next to your watermelon head it have a arrow and a label: “Luther Jr. Stay-at-home Dad.” In your hand it have something that resemble … a axe? a boat paddle? Nah, you realize is a spatula.

  “Fuck,” you mumble, pulling out a chair and sinking in it. Your son gone and ask the teacher what to call you, now that you’s scratch your balls for a living.

  “Junior, you sure you want to do this?” Judith say. She straining macaroni in the sink; you grating cheese. “America ain’t no beda-rose, nah!” she add.

  You argue back and forth ’bout all the people she know that gone America and dying to come back.

  Then—thunk!—Judith rest-down the strainer hard in the sink. You glance across. She staring out the window.

  “You go miss me? That’s what it is, ain’t? Tell me.”

  “Don’t be a ass!” she say. “I’s a big woman, I could handle myself. But, is the boys …”

  “Let we cross that bridge when we get to it,” you say, a tightness in your chest like you just bench-press one-fifty. “I don’t even have a visa yet.”

  You go down a li’l stronger on the grater. This fuckin’ woman hard! Harder than this old, dry cheese. It woulda kill her to say she go miss you?

  The two of you was seventeen, in the last year of technical school, when she get pregnant with Jason. Y’all wasn’t in love or nothing, but her granny put her out, so you had to band together. Your parents was a disgrace: Luther Sr. drowning in puncheon rum, and your mother, Janice, ups-and-gone with a next man. Three years pass you straight, like a full bus. Then Judith find out she pregnant again, with Kevin. You and Judith, it come like y’all grow up together. And, although you’s a big man now, twenty-four years, you never had to face the outside world without Judith. She raise your babies and, in a way, she raise you too.

  She never been the lovey-dovey kind but, man, she get more colder lately. She dropping words for you; saying things like, “People can’t make love on hungry belly.”

  You pay for the appointment, fill out the form, take the picture. You photocopy a bank statement, fake a job letter. You line up in the road at 5:00 AM, in front the US Embassy, with a sandwich and a juice box in your jacket.

  People in the line shoo-shoo-ing. Uncle Sam know everything is what they saying. Hmmm. Suppose the Embassy ask ’bout your aunt who did overstay her six months in LA? Suppose they know you lose your real job?

  When your batch of twenty get call-in the Embassy, you watch everything. People go up once to hand in their documents. Then again for the interview. You figure out those getting send by the Post Office counter is the lucky ones. Them others, who drop their eyes and slink out quick, quick, them is the rejects.

  You watch five from your batch get reject—some of them real posh-looking.

  Shit! If they could do them that, who’s me? You feeling like you have to pee but you dare not leave your seat.

  At 9:00, they call your name; 9:15, the interview start.

  The lady barely watching you. She asking simple questions but you feel like she just waiting for you to trip up. When she ask, “Purpose of visit?” you amaze yourself with how you slant the lie you and Judith did practice (“Vacation”). How you pull it nearer the truth.

  “School purchases,” you say in your best English, “before September. The children needs plenty things.”

  The lady smile. “They always do,” she say.

  Your B1/B2 visa get approve.

  You feel high and light—like you could reach America on your own fuckin’ wings. You stop at KFC, near City Gate, and splurge: a bucket, four regular sides, a two-liter Sprite. A nice surprise for the boys after school. On the maxi-taxi ride home, you decide how you going to tell them.

  Jason ripping into his second piece. Kevin still nibbling a drumstick. You watch all their hand and face getting greasy and sticky; the ketchup plopping down on their vests. Scabby knee, shred-up elbow, Jason missing teeth, Kevin always-runny nose. Is like you recording a movie in your head, to replay later, in America. They sit, stand, climb, all over the dining-table chairs, while Judith complaining and wiping, wiping.

  Finally, you say, “Boys, what if we could eat KFC every Friday?”

  Not even glancing up from his meat, Jason answer, “I done ask Mummy that long time and she say we can’t afford it.”

  “I know. But we could afford it now. Daddy going America.”

  The boys stare at you blank, blank.

  “Allyuh have to make a list of all the toys allyuh want. Because, when I go America, I getting everything.” You growl the last word, bare your teeth, li
ke a hungry lion.

  The cubs laugh.

  “America far?” Jason say.

  “Yes, I have to go on a big airplane.”

  “We could go too?”

  “No, you have school. Plus you have to take care of your mother.” You glance at Judith. She look like she holding her breath. In truth, you doing the same damn thing.

  “So, Daddy,” Jason say, “when you say ‘everything’ you mean I could get a G.I. Joe watch?”

  The boys call toy after toy, snack after snack—everything they know from American TV. With every yes, their excitement grow and grow. Till they fidgeting again—more than ever now—popping up like bubbles in the Sprite. They start rocking the chairs and singing, “Daddy going America! Daddy going America!” They making you feel like you’s a superhero.

  “Stop it!” Judith shout. “Stop that right now!”

  A few weeks later, in the purple-looking hours before dawn, you slink out your bed and into the boys’ bedroom. You tiptoe and kiss Jason, on the top bunk; you bend and kiss Kevin, his cheek wet with dribble. You want them wake up so you could hear them say, “Bye, Daddy,” but, same time, you scared they will. You might be able to bear it. Or you might just say, “Fuck America,” and stay.

  In the stillness, you hear a engine purr and handbrakes jerk. Your brother-in-law, Declan, just pull up outside.

  Judith with you by the kitchen table, going over everything one last time: ticket, departure card, Rufus address, virgin passport. You tuck them inside the same bomber jacket you did wear to the Embassy.