What the River Washed Away

by Muriel Mharie Macleod

  Errol’s voice gets quiet and he shoots one of his side looks my way. I got already that Errol knows who Mambo is.

  ‘Nobody gonna say this chile ain’t yours, Ainsley,’ he says. ‘Ya say no – well, whose chile is it? Eh? I believe it, I right here a witness on this, and I know ya some, but take my word on it, ’cause nobody gonna give ya better. Take Safi to her folks, tell them what’s happened, and then ya gotta walk away. Ya gotta go get on with life. Ain’t no helping Safi now. That’s the truth of it, son.’

  ‘I ain’t gonna do that.’

  ‘Ain’t no better advice, son.’

  I know Errol is right. This is gonna drag Ainsley down and if he ain’t the father of that child, it ain’t his fault. I tell him Safi must have done what she did so he would never find out about it. She was trying to keep a secret and I know she would never have wanted to hurt Ainsley or her ma. I know she wanted to marry Ainsley, she was talking about it, and she never spoke about anybody else in her life at all. I figure something happened to Safi, something she didn’t want to happen, and she got desperate when she found herself with child over it. She risked taking something, whatever it is that got her like this. She didn’t want me or anybody else knowing about it, that’s for sure. That’s about as much as I can figure.

  ‘She’s gonna come outta this,’ says Ainsley, tears rolling down his face, ‘and we gonna carry on. I don’t care who fathered the child, it’s gonna be like it’s my own, anyways. I see we ain’t needing no sheriff here, but that’s all. No way we need no sheriff …’

  ‘We gonna take this one step at a time, son. Tomorrow morning Safi’s gonna get on back to her ma,’ says Errol.

  This is going to kill Safi’s ma.

  ‘No. I’m gonna ask Mrs Archer-Laing if she’s able to stay here till I find a place for us. Me, Safi and the baby,’ says Ainsley.

  ‘Stay here?’

  ‘How’s that gonna happen, son?’

  ‘She’s a good Christian woman, ain’t she? It ain’t gonna be for long, just till I find a room someplace that gonna take us in. And I know Safi’s gonna get better.’

  I know she won’t.

  Safi’s head flops in Ainsley’s arms like it’s just not part of her body at all. He rocks it to and fro and I turn away. That’s a sight I don’t like to be looking at.

  The front door closes behind Mrs Archer-Laing. She’s back. We all know we’re never gonna get Safi out of here without her knowing about it. She’s gonna find out about this one way or another. Ain’t like Safi can just disappear off the face of the earth with no word said.

  ‘She’ll let Safi stay till I find us a place. I know she’s gonna do that. I’m gonna ask her …’

  ‘No, son …’

  ‘I’m gonna ask Mrs Archer-Laing if she can stay till I get something fixed up, or I’m taking her home to my folks.’

  ‘You can’t walk out of here with Safi, look how she is … and she needs to be with her own folks.’ I’m reckoning already that I can get Bobby-Rob to pass by here with his cart for taking Safi back to her folks.

  Ainsley starts picking her up off the bed.

  ‘No, Ainsley,’ I grab his arm. ‘Leave her be.’

  ‘Shush now …’ Errol holds his hands up to stop us arguing about it.

  ‘She needs to be with her own folks, me and her ma. Errol, don’t let Ainsley take her, please.’

  ‘All right, son,’ says Errol. ‘This all coming out one way or another, like Arletta says, so best Mrs Archer-Laing ain’t left in the dark in her own house. Like Arletta says, ain’t like Safi can just disappear and no one say nothing about it. And she’s right fond of her, too. She gonna ask anyways. I’m gonna go tell her what’s happening here. Maybe that’s best. Let me go.’

  Errol shakes his head and leaves to tell Mrs Archer-Laing about Safi. In no time at all I hear her gasp as she rushes upstairs. She looks like she’s just got one of these electric shocks, but then I see her face soften when she catches sight of poor Safi looking limp and lifeless on her bed. Mrs Archer-Laing holds her floppy head in the palms of her hands and Safi’s lifeless eyes blink, like maybe she knows her. A tiny flicker of a smile curls up on her pale lips and I turn my head away. It’s the smile of a child. That’s when I know for sure that I’ve lost Safi.

  ‘Oh you poor, poor girl. What on earth could she have taken? Arletta, you must know something.’

  But the truth is I don’t know anything about it.

  Mrs Archer-Laing has a good friend she says we can trust. He’s a doctor, a man of the church too, but he knows about these things because it used to happen all the time. She wants to send for him right away.

  Errol nods at Ainsley.

  ‘If there’s a chance he’s gonna help Safi, but we ain’t wanting no sheriff, Mrs Archer-Laing. That’s just big trouble for all of us.’

  ‘Yes, Ainsley, I know that. We can trust him.’

  The doctor says the same as Errol, that Safi’s over six months gone and she’s full of poison. I start wondering if there’s one of Mambo’s black newspaper wrappings hanging round someplace that I need to be getting rid of.

  ‘I’ve seen this too often,’ says the doctor. ‘More often than I care to think about. Fortunately less and less these days, but I have never seen anyone ever come out of it entirely.’

  ‘But Errol says these babies are often born,’ says Mrs Archer-Laing.

  ‘Yes. Though the girl is alive, she’s catatonic, but the baby will continue to grow.’

  We should not move her, we have to make sure Safi has nourishment, feed her like a baby, but she must have food for the sake of the child. She might improve a little in time – the doctor is kind and says he’s sure in this case she will – but then he says there’s some that would advise something else.

  ‘Terminating the pregnancy, Dolly,’ he says to Mrs Archer-Laing. ‘In the circumstances.’

  ‘Good heavens, we can’t do that!’

  ‘Well, it is against my faith too, Dolly, and at this late stage it would involve surgery, but I can think of nothing else. Nothing that I have ever seen work, and of course there are no guarantees it would benefit the mother or the child.’

  Mrs Archer-Laing thanks him for his time and offers to see him out.

  ‘Forgive me for suggesting it, Dolly, we’ve known one another a long time. It would not bring her back. It would just terminate the pregnancy, that’s all.’

  So it comes about that Mrs Archer-Laing lets Safi stay. Ainsley comes less and less, and Safi lies there with the child growing inside her belly. The rest of us take turns looking after her. It’s no task at all because she just needs spoon-feeding and walking as far as the bathroom when Agnes is out, though getting her to put one foot in front of the other ain’t exactly that easy; she just shuffles, a little like Errol does himself. The rest of the time she stares at the ceiling and I keep wondering about her secrets and why she kept her trouble from me. I’m her best friend and never once did she say anything about it.

  I tell Mambo Safi’s hardly gonna be able to see her folks right now because she’s working hard and saving up to get married. I know Mambo will tell Safi’s ma and she’s gonna be proud her girl is getting on. She’s gonna be happy Safi found herself a hard-working husband able to earn money and get a better life. I pray hard in church, and every night, first time ever, that by some miracle Safi will come out of it.

  Mrs Archer-Laing sure is the good Christian Ainsley thought she was gonna be.

  ‘We must keep ourselves to ourselves for the next few weeks till the baby is born. I’ve told Agnes that Safi has gone back to look after her mother, and since Safi makes no sound, well, that should be fine. Arletta, use the chamber pot when Agnes is in. I’m sure she doesn’t suspect a thing.

  ‘Arletta, I forbid you to tell Red, enough lives have been ruined here, and the more people that know about it, the more likely it is to leak out. And remember that we have chosen not to tell Sheriff Clusky, and that’s a burden we share together in o
rder not to hurt those we love. I am praying; I have faith that Safi will come out of this. If it’s in His will, then she will recover, but remember, Arletta, we are not privy to God’s will here on earth.’

  I hear her put Monsieur Desnoyers off when I got class and she needs to be sitting with Safi. For a good Christian woman Mrs Archer-Laing sure is some kind of fibber.

  ‘It’s the usual with my back, when I have trouble with it the doctor says nothing but rest for a few weeks. I’ll certainly be at the service on Sunday to see you.’

  Red comes over, same as usual too, and we keep studying but it’s hard and I tell him I have a few aches and pains myself to get him to leave early. He don’t seem to notice anything different. We were never used to seeing much of Safi in our back parlour anyhow, and he’s so taken up with studies, nothing else means much. I start thinking he ain’t even particular about being with me.

  One night when Red ain’t over, Errol knocks on the parlour door.

  ‘Ya all right, Arletta?’

  ‘Sure. Come in.’

  He brings the kitchen smell of the past half-hour on a small plate in the form of a steaming fruitcake slice he places in front of me. He’s been thinking about Mambo. It never crossed my mind that he’d know about her till Safi happened and it was clear he did.

  ‘I know about our old ways, Arletta. Them old ways were goin’ on all over when I was growing up – ain’t no ways but the old ways back then. Even where I was raised down South, everybody was always speaking about the mambos in ya family. Ain’t thought of then the way it is now, and ya grandma was the best there ever was. From the Dessalines your mambos. Ain’t no beating the Dessalines.’

  ‘You never believed in it, though?’

  But he did, that’s the way it was in his time, till getting an apprenticeship changed his mind. Took him out of the old life.

  ‘I got me one of them apprenticeships they had goin’ on back then. When we become free men, my folks got lucky. We found us a strip of earth for working. Plenty folks ain’t even get that; some folks even stayed on at the plantation for the sake of a wage – ain’t nothing else for them to do – so we sure were lucky. I was just a young man then and still with my folks, but there were plenty with li’l uns and it was hard on them. Them were hard times, Arletta. My pa, he learnt carpentry on the plantation, his father teach him that good. He was able to make fine tables, fix chairs and cabinets and all that, so when he got work fixin’ something, he’d take me with him and that’s the way I got me that trade. I got to be a carpenter’s apprentice. Gov’ment help gave us a start with it, so I was earnin’. I ain’t know about nothin’ before then. I been pickin’ cotton since I start walkin’, but I get taught carpentry by my pa, and I learnt to be good at it too.’

  He takes a dusting cloth from his pocket and starts wiping furniture. He’s got that habit. That’s why the whole place is shiny as a new pin.

  ‘We all get outta them old ways and take to the Holy Bible. We used to sing in praise, but nobody was able to read on the plantation back in them days, they ain’t let us read, we learnt our praising off by heart. We start learnin’ how to read when we got to be free men, and that was from the Bible, ain’t no other book about. Only book there was then. Anyhow, the only folks teachin’ us were church folks. I got to thinkin’ it was God’s own book, and got a hold of one of my own from my pastor, a right fine man. Still using it every morning and every night. Pages ain’t holding no more, so I got a new one for taking out to church, but I’m still using Pastor Abraham’s for myself.

  ‘After I was taught to read, I was able to hold the Holy Book in my own hands and make my own mind up on stuff. Then they started building up all them new churches. I found plenty work to feed my kin and took to a God-fearing life along with it. God, and working on His churches to spread His word, gave us a good life when I think on what went before.’

  He stops polishing.

  ‘That sure was a good life and we were lucky. Some ain’t so lucky, that’s true. But when my missus gone to the Lord ’fore her time, and my kids all grown anyways, I come here, start lookin’ after Mrs Archer-Laing and doin’ about the place. I been here all that time since. I know Mrs Archer-Laing from our church, and I knew her good husband well too, he was a fine, clean-living man. I knew him from all the building goin’ on down South. He was part of all them buildings goin’ up in them days. Come over from England to supervise stuff goin’ up. Folks were real sorry when he passed away. Them’s good folks.’

  The fruit slice is gone. I flatten crumbs on the plate and suck them off sweet-tasting fingers.

  ‘Mrs Archer-Laing is a fine sorta woman, that I can say for sure, Errol. Look what she’s doing for Safi. And for me. You think she knows about Mambo too?’

  ‘Nah,’ he says, ‘she ain’t never think about that. Ain’t her world. White folks don’t pay it much mind. Just something else to beat black folks up with when they get to feelin’ like it. Mrs Archer-Laing ain’t one of them kind.’

  ‘She’s been good to us, and Agnes, and you too, I guess.’

  ‘Well, she sure got some stick back a-ways, for taking in coloured folks as boarders.’

  ‘Did she?’

  That’s why she got the dogs in the yard. Makes sense. Some folks even took to writing her nasty letters, that’s why Errol opens her mail first, to make sure none of that sort of thing is in there to upset her. One time they were throwing stones and broke her parlour windows. One time somebody even spit on her.

  ‘And she’s still taking us in? And we’re all better off here than anyplace I ever seen.’

  ‘The church got onto it. She never went to the law, though they showed up wantin’ to cause trouble. She sent them packing, though, and over the next few weeks Reverend Franklin preach one fine sermon after another on it from the pulpit, sayin that kinda carry-on ain’t nothing to do with Jesus at all. He wouldn’t let it go. Folks started callin’ him Reverend Holler over that, for a while.’ Errol laughs his quiet laugh. ‘Yeah, they called him that for a while. But his sermons and them dogs sure put paid to it.’

  ‘Ya have a lot of children of your own, Errol?’

  ‘Four of my own, and six grandchildren, still countin’.’

  His family are down in New Orleans, all good-living folks, and doing all right for themselves, it seems. He’s rightly proud-sounding of them all. Two of his boys doing the carpentry he taught them, another one building levees, and he’s got a daughter cooking for somebody called Mr Maestri.

  ‘Mr Maestri’s got a fine furniture store down there and we worked ’longside him and his pa for a long time. Mr Maestri always after us for doin’ something.’

  Errol laughs into his chest and picks up my plate.

  ‘You taught her cooking too, I guess.’

  ‘Nah, my good lady missus do that.’

  ‘Thanks for the fruitcake slice.’

  ‘Maybe it ain’t ya ma at all, Arletta. I mean, we don’t know for sure and it ain’t right jumping to thinkin’ things. I been thinkin’ on how in the old days a mambo always wanna know how things workin’ out. If it go this way or that way. Ya ma gonna wanna know, I’s sure about that. If ya ain’t heard nothing, like she ain’t asking, then I’m thinkin’ this gotta be somebody else. Ain’t no way ya ma gonna do this, anyways. That’s what I’m thinkin’ now. I never hear about this bein’ part of her ways at all.’

  ‘Maybe something went wrong. Maybe Safi was to take it in two stages instead of one, or maybe my ma got distracted by something, and put too much of something in it.’

  ‘Well, them’s a lot of somethings, Arletta, and ain’t any kind of messy mistake I hear ya ma ever make. And I sure know her make a few, but ain’t ever as Mambo. That’s a fact.’

  Errol chuckles in his chest. I guess he’s seen my Mambo wiggling. I just thought, because Safi knows Mambo so well, that’s where she’d go, but it might just as easy be the reason she didn’t. Errol’s maybe got it right.

  ‘I don’t know who th
e father of that child is, Errol. I’ve been thinking about all the folks we’ve met since we came to Marksville, all the folks we know back home and I’m stumped good about it. I never got no sign at all she was seeing somebody else. Never. Sure shocks me the same as everybody else.’

  ‘Neither did Ainsley, Arletta, neither did Ainsley.’

  ‘And I reckon she’d have told me. Me and Safi never been ones for secrets.’

  But that ain’t exactly true neither, because I never told Safi any of my secrets.

  I go visit Mambo. I know her better than anyone and I feel sure I’m gonna know if she’s given Safi something. Mambo’s a woman full of big pride, she’s all for flaunting her pride; like Errol says, that’s a mambo.

  Rochelle is growing up fast, and pretty. She’s got Quince’s way of looking in mirrors and combing her hair till it’s been every which way hair can be, and never the same way twice. And she’s right proud of the new frock he’s bought for her in Baton Rouge, twirling and dancing with a little rag doll Madame Bonnet brought on her last birthday. She’s still sharing a room with Mambo and Quince and that brings bad stuff right up in me now she’s getting older.

  Mambo tells me she’s got paint for inside the cabin, just like I said.

  ‘Quince brought it. Some of his pals got work paintin’ steamboats. I don’t reckon it’s extra, but he bring it home so I ain’t askin’.’

  ‘Quince goin’ get off his ass and do it,’ says Rochelle, and it’s like I’m hearing myself at her age.

  Mambo’s chipping ice out back and popping it in new tall glasses with pretty yellow pineapples painted on the sides. Good to see Mambo getting nice stuff for herself and the cabin. She pours fresh orange juice and hands me a glass.

  ‘Guess what Arletta? I’m gonna build me a kitchen out here.’

  ‘That’s great Mambo. Who’s gonna put that up?’

  ‘Everybody clamourin’ for work these days. We got men round here askin’ all the time and some of them doing fine stuff along here on them new cabins. I got us a price, nothing fancy mind you, with a little room for Rochelle right ’longside it.’