Sic Transit Wagon

by Barbara Jenkins

  Your girl now reach outside the first gas station. One car getting gas pumped; one, two, three cars, one, two, three, four maxis speed by on the left shoulder, flash through the gas station, chicane via Ridgewood Towers Drive and Starlite Plaza entrance, dash through Starlite, swish past a dazed woman sweeping leaves into a long-handled dustpan and, screeching to a halt by Jassodra’s doubles stall, wedge through the full lane to join the highway again. Booming vibrates from a nearby, low-slung, electric-blue car squatting in its pool of blue neon underlighting. Driver’s head – cool dude – nodding to beat; her head throbbing with beat. At Starlite Plaza, Boyfriend calls.

  “It’s quarter to eight, where you reach?”

  “I’m outside Starlite.”

  “Starlite? Is only there you reach?”

  “Look here, I’m doing the best I can. You think I want to be here?”

  “I’m not blaming you. It’s just that we have to get there by nine.”

  “Listen up. Why not just drink some coffee and read the papers?”

  Just like Boyfriend – gotta keep moving, moving – yeah, like the time they were stuck in traffic on the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway going to the airport, he made her take all manner of shortcuts through Aranguez and El Socorro only to see, when they joined back the highway, the big yellow & blue Courts delivery truck that they were right behind earlier, now about fifteen cars ahead. Did he mind? Hell, no! – he’s motion-fixated and he got his fix.

  “Chaconia Crescent, a new way home” proclaims a Housing Authority sign on a building site for twenty-two apartments. Another sign says “Heavy Equiptments crossing”, and has been saying so for two years without shame outside Four Roads Police Station. Some heavy “equiptments” in the shape of two men, neither in uniform, seated with crossed legs on the upper balcony of the blue and white police station, survey the scene below, as impassive as if they on stage playing Trini Canutes contemplating the waves coming ashore at Maracas. No other human being in sight at the station. A passing brown mongrel lifts a casual leg and pisses on the base of a lamppost adorned at eye-level by a trio of tattered election posters for the members of parliament for the area. Your girl mentally applauds. Little pot hong, you just too short – like one of the said MPs – she smiles here – but you getting full marks for effort.

  Red light flashes for pedestrians at crossing on Four Roads junction; woman and baby cross, school children cross, bent old man with stick crosses. Nobody need heed traffic; it’s like crossing through a car park. An old tyre stands on its side, half hidden in a hole in the pavement, forming a black arch, looking as if it’s waiting for something to be scored through it. Scraps of yellow caution tape, two styrofoam boxes and a KFC paper cup, a paper plate and a broken plastic fork are temporarily trapped in the tall grass growing out of pavement cracks. They are working their way to the drain shower by shower. Oh yes, we need all the drain blockage we can get to ensure good quality flooding next wet season. Two-drop-a-rain and river come down is the Diego story.

  Out of Morne Coco Road, cars are converging from four lanes on to two. On the right is the second gas station. “Driving in traffic is tough, choosing the right motor oil is easy” trumpets a billboard. Vehicles squeeze out here too, forcing bumper right in front of your bumper so if you only leggo brakes, is bounce. Drivers staring ahead, wraparound designer shades, no eye contact. Absorbed with cellphones. She lets in one, then another, and an inching phalanx of shining armour from the left, creeping in parallel, advances on its stationary foe. Red Digicel billboard on left promises “Talk free all day”. Her cellphone rings; it can’t be love, she decides – Boyfriend has to be on Digicel.

  “You move yet?”

  “Not so that anyone would notice.”

  “So what you going to do?”

  “What you think I can do, eh? Give me some options.”

  “I don’t know. It’s not me in the traffic jam. It’s me waiting for you.”

  “Well, I’m certainly not enjoying this either; maybe you will just have to carry on waiting.”

  “Until?”

  “Until I get there or until I don’t get there, which ever is soonest.”

  Nothing like a little puzzle to spice up a dialogue destined for drama and discord.

  Up ahead she sees the big tree. January 18 and the tree still trailing Christmas lights in classic chalice arrangement. A big star on top where the tree’s head was lopped off two years ago so the star could shine out unhindered by leaves. We certainly have our priorities where it matters. Now it’s eight a.m., one hour – a whole sixty minutes – since she left home – three hundred yards behind – and your girl’s slipped into reflective, self-flagellating “who send me?” mode.

  The white Corolla is just alongside a pavement stall where a weather-worn wood table is piled with breadfruit and green mangoes. There’s a dirt gap behind the stall. She can see down the gap and she suddenly loses her grip on the here and now. The references are tilted to the vertical, to shade, to deep green and to filtered light. Old milk tins and mossy clay pots with yellow-stemmed palms, spilt paintbox crotons, heart-shaped anthuriums, leaves screening their in flagrante flowers, a mango vert tree, a chenette tree, a zaboca tree, a breadfruit tree, and a scaled-down man standing looking up at a pomerac tree. She follows his gaze. She sees the shoes and pants legs of another man up the tree standing at the axils of the branches coming out at right angles to the main trunk. He has a floral shoulder bag reaching down to his hip. It is bulging with lumps. Red, pink and white stripey pomerac hang from the branches close to the trunk. A pale blue house, secreted among sweet lime and aralias in the back, faces on to this slice of Eden. The scene is shielded from the road by the curving embrace of a tall, thick hedge of candle-flower bush.

  When she was small, she used to look for and capture the jumping ladybirds that lived on that kind of bush. Brown they were, wings held in a stiff triangle like sails on their backs, with pale yellow mottles, disappointing to her then that they were not the flat-backed red ones with black dots of real ladybirds on book covers. None that she could make out now, on this bush, though; you had to look close at the underside of the leaf to see them, if she remembers correctly. She has passed this spot every day for the past sixteen years and never once spotted this secret space. Dwelling on the lost decades of childhood, looking for ladybirds inter alia, more lost decades driving past forgotten rustic scenes moisten your girl’s eyes – while drying out her throat. Phone rings. Boyfriend; who else?

  “Look, it’s quarter past eight. What you want me to do?”

  “Don’t provoke me with that kind of question or I might really answer it.”

  “If you had stayed the night as I suggested, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

  “Wait a minute; I was to spend the night by you so as to avoid a traffic jam? That was the reason?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be here now and you there.”

  “Oh ho! So, I’m to sleep over for convenience sake? That’s it? What’s good for you must be good for me too? Look fuck you.”

  “That too could have been on the cards.”

  “I’m in no mood for your puerile attempts at humour… just go to hell.”

  Your girl puts an end to the exchange by turning off the phone. She can’t take on no more jamming right now; nuff stress with this traffic. Chevrons of joining cars come from the left, from Diego Martin Main Road. On the right is Acton Court – eighteen or so townhouse villas. Fifteen feet of sheer, solid, buff-painted concrete topped by gilt spikes protect the gated community. The grass verge outside, a pavement remnant, is neatly trimmed. Flat cropped ivy has been trained to cover the wall and she sees the main shoots, thick as thumbs. A grackle walks by along the grass. His blue-black sheen ripples along his body as he jerks along; his head twitches towards the ivy; luminous yellow irises peer under the ivy’s green skirt. His black beak makes sudden stabbing prods at the space where grass and ivy meet. Intent on his own agenda. Birds, bees, men, politicians, all doi
ng their own thing… irregardless… hmm, birds do it, bees do it, even men and pol-it-i-shuns do it… let’s do it, let’s take on no-bod-y… tum… dee… dum… dee… dum… humming and drumming a finger staccato on the steering wheel… Humdrums, doldrums, doll drums… nice one… Hmmmm… might as well, your girl thinks, turning on the phone and calling Boyfriend. He answers.

  “You! I was trying to get you. Check and see how many missed calls on your phone. You turned off the phone? You leave me here stranded and I can’t even contact you to find out what going on.”

  “I must’ve been in a dead zone.”

  “How you could be in a dead zone and you say the car not moving? You wasn’t in any dead zone before.”

  “I’m in no mood for the third degree. I’ve had enough. I don’t know when I’ll get to Belmont. I don’t think I can go anywhere today. As soon as I get out of this… mess, I am going back home.”

  “Just so? Just so you say you not going and I waiting here for you all morning? I know I shouldn’t have relied on you. You change your mind for every little thing. Did you know Chica offered to take me and I turned her down? She is right there in Cascade; I could have been in UWI all now so with her if you didn’t have me trapped here waiting for you.”

  “Listen, friend, don’t imagine for a minute that I have trapped you. You are a free agent. Come and go as you please. You know something? Call Chica; see if she still home; go with her. And listen to me, next time you sick and want somebody to run and get doctor and medicine for you, call Chica too. And next time the bank write to say they foreclosing your mortgage, call Chica to break her fixed deposit to fix up your business; and furthermore, next time you… Look, to ass with you!”

  “And fuck you.”

  “That would have to be rape.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Thanks.”

  Your girl punches the switch-off key and flings the phone on the floor behind the passenger seat. She rests her forehead on the steering wheel for a moment and then, at a blaring horn from behind, she sits up and moves the car two inches forward to fill the gap. She looks up, ahead, and there, before her, are the hills of Le Platte. Indistinct in suffused light, the grey-green shrubby karstic limestone plateau, worn into egg-box topography by time, and gouged by a quarry on its flank, nestles in the middle of folded sierras. The barbs of towers and relay stations pierce the head and shoulder of Cumberland Hill to the right. The newly minted sun, shafting in from the south, sends thick blades of light up the mountain side, underlighting the tops of the trees; a billion leaves are transmuted to a pale translucent gold. Shards of light glance off glossy royal palm feathers and slick coconut spears. Yearning bamboos lean towards the valley, trembling against one another in a flirtatious passing breeze. In the shade below, in the foothills, the air is a still, slaty blue – accumulated exhaust fumes trapped under an early morning temperature inversion. Her left brain whispers – yes, true; answers right brain, but still, but still… Her heart slows; she exhales. Sometimes, girl, you have to admit defeat; it’s all, all of it, much too much bigger than you.

  Four traffic lanes jerk into where one lane should be, and your girl, in the correct lane, is pushed over the road edge around the southbound loop and goes bumping across the dirt and roots of the flamboyant tree that shades the open space alongside the big drain. A Toyota Yaris billboard rises from a squatter yard to her right proclaiming its inspired message: “It’s not where you go, it’s how you get there”. Now there’s something for the ladies outside the church to discuss. How does that fit in with the Christian ethic of sacrifices in this life for rewards in the next etc? What about means and ends, eh? Is the statement a subversive, nah, overt pitch for a shallow, consumerist life? And what of the juxtaposition of the picture of a huge expensive car on a massive billboard in the yard of a ketch-arse squatter dwelling? Hard stuff, hard hard stuff; better left alone.

  Your girl’s attention drifts back to the road conditions. She counts thirty-eight people standing at the road edge in a strung-out cluster at the Petit Valley junction. Their faces are stamped with resignation. Enough people for two big maxis, but she and they know that it would be a miracle if one comes in the next hour with even one free space. Over their heads Toyota Rav4 exhorts, “Just drive your imagination”. She remembers laughing when a local wit declared, “You can’t do satire in Trinidad. Trinidad is satire”. Remembering this can bring only a twisted smile.

  Articulated cranes loom ahead, as sharp a yellow as on a child’s toy against the blue sky and over the raw grey cement towers of one hundred and twenty apartments under construction. The whole damn country feels like it’s somebody’s toy to play with as he pleases – everything reduced to Matchbox, Meccano and Lego – but your girl is not in the mood for any more games. The Corolla is now exactly opposite the entrance to her neighbourhood, but on the southbound arm of the highway at the point where a slip road links the two arms. Red Digicel’s billboard boasts its nationwide range overhead – “From Buccoo to Barrackpore” – and your girl adds, “and back to base”, as she steers into the sliplane to cross over the northbound highway and complete the circuit to Victoria Gardens. One lane opens a tight gap to let her ooze across, so does the next; at the last minute, the corner of her left eye catches a gold car flying up on the shoulder and she brakes hard to avoid collision. The delinquent driver dismisses her with a “move yuh cunt quick, woman” signal. She retaliates with a brisk “what the fuck you doing there, jackass?” hand. She glides down a deserted Victoria Drive. Manmohan says, “Like you come back. I hear a man get lick down by the walkover in Cocorite.” “Is so I hear too,” your girl agrees. She drives into her yard. It is nine am. Two whole hours – one hundred and twenty minutes since she left home.

  From the car, she collects her bag and the cellphone, turning it on again. She flicks on the kettle switch, seizes the garlic stone, bashes a cardamom pod, two cloves, a star anise and a fat toe of ginger, drops them into her mega mug and fills it up with boiling water. She spots the Express on the kitchen counter and picks it up, turning the pages to the daily horoscope. Sagittarius says, “There’s no way to please all of the people. This should be liberating…” Amen! she slaps the horoscope column with a hi-five. The cellphone rings; she glances at the number and lets it carry on ringing. She bows her head over the mug of fragrant brew, inhales deeply and strolls with it and the newspaper out to the gallery. She rests the mug on the wide greenheart rail, folds herself into, then stretches out fully within the waiting hammock. She turns her attention to the comics pages. It’s time for your girl to check out what Calvin & Hobbes are getting up to today.

  ACROSS THE GULF

  Dee drove over the bridge, out of the little cul-de-sac where they lived and started to edge into the sporadic stream of traffic on her right. As she did so, she glanced across to her left and spotted the fruit lady hanging up bananas. “Look, dear,” she said to her husband, “the fruit lady early today.” She angled left instead, slipping the car onto the grass verge, a short distance away from the fruit stall. “I’ll be back in a minute, Harold.” Her husband didn’t say anything. He didn’t turn his head in her direction. She got out, shut the door behind her, walked to the stall and exchanged greetings with the fruit lady and chose a pineapple and some bananas. As she opened her handbag to extract her wallet to pay, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to face her husband, who was smiling in that vague sheepish way he had lately adopted. A sharp needle of irritation shot through Dee – she would again have to go through the palaver of making sure he was belted in properly and the door on his side locked securely. Now they were almost certainly going to be late for his appointment.

  She got to the car, rested the fruit and handbag on the roof and tried to open the door on the passenger side to let Harold in. It wouldn’t open. She walked round to the driver’s side. That door, too, was locked, as were all the doors when she tried them. “Give me the keys,” she said to Harold. He looked puzzled, held out his hands,
empty palms up. She patted his pants pockets, his shirt pocket, but there was nothing hard there. Harold smiled, pushed his hands in his pants pockets and pulled out two beige tongues of fabric that flopped against his grey pants legs. A realisation was dawning in Dee’s head; she closed her eyes to help her focus on it and suddenly it took shape. She looked in through the window on the driver’s side. There was the bunch of keys swinging from the ignition, the yellow key-ring face smiling idiotically at her. She looked at Harold. He too was smiling, waiting for her to take the lead. She closed her eyes again. She had to work out what to do next. She picked up her handbag. “OK,” she said, “I’m going home for the spare set.”

  She led him back over the bridge to the deepest shade under the big samaan, guiding him to sit on one of its surface buttress roots – knobbly, ridged benches radiating from the massive trunk. “Wait here for me.” Without a backward glance she stomped through the white heat, the puddled shadow of her swinging handbag a cruel metronome to the thudding in her head. Now he couldn’t be trusted to do a simple little thing like go home for the spare bunch of car keys hanging on the inside of the door of the cups and saucers cupboard where they had hung for the more than half-century of their marriage. Back home, she collected the spare set, locked the front door, and set off again.

  When she got back to the tree Harold was nowhere in sight. She put down the things in her hand on the roof of the car, next to the pile of fruit, looked around and called his name. There was no answer. “Harold!” she shouted, louder this time, an edge to her voice. Still no answer. Maybe, maybe he was playing a childish game, playing hide and seek. She walked round the thick girth of the trunk, calling his name. Where had that blasted man gone? When she got back to the car, she saw the fruit lady waving at her.

  “He say he going for a walk,” she called out.