My mother wasn’t even aware that she compared us so.
On the daddy front, well he not doing too well.
There it was. “On the daddy front.” “Come home” in code. My mother had a special gift for manipulation. I was mad, and I wanted to cry at the same time, because I missed him and because I knew when I left home that there was a good chance I would never see him again. But that she would use that against me?
On the daddy front, well he not doing too well. He went clinic the other day and his pressure was up and the sugar sky high. I don’t know what else to tell him. Is like since you gone he give up hope. I cook food without salt and he putting in he own salt. He know he not suppose to drink and he drinking the worse rum, that nasty babash Hamil make in the bush. Is only you who could get him to listen, Gracie. I don’t know what to do. Helen don’t know what to do. If we had a phone well then you could call and talk to him, but with the one foot he can’t even go by the lady on the hill. So I don’t know. Okay, hoping these few words reach you in the best of health and strength. Try not to be too rude to Sylvia. I know you say she could be hard to take, but sometimes you are not the easiest person in the world to get along with either. Write soon or when you have some extra change give us a call. The lady on the hill will give us the message. I know you have it but I will put her phone number at the bottom.
May the good Lord bless and keep you and don’t forget to pray.
Your Loving Mother,
Grace
I stretched out on the carpet and closed my eyes. My mother had never had any hopes for Helen and me, not that she’d told us about. One day when she was bent over the tub, I had asked her what, when Helen and I were babies, did she dream for us? What did she want for her two daughters in this world? My mother had stopped scrubbing. With her wet fingers she’d pinched my arm hard, wringing my flesh, and told me she wished that neither of us would have a child before we were married to bring shame on her house.
I was Daddy’s girl. I visited him at hospital every day for the month he was there before the rot spread so far the doctors decided they had to cut. After the operation I refused to go back. Helen went and my mother went and all the neighbors in the village went, but I refused to go. Finally my mother said enough was enough. My father was looking out for me every day. So I went. I walked into the ward and thought for the first time the air smelled like the abattoir in Penal market. I couldn’t look at the faces in the other beds. I looked straight ahead to my father’s bed. He was propped up against the thin hospital pillows, and he followed me with his eyes as I walked toward him. I was crying by the time I got to him, and he was crying too. I couldn’t look down. So what going to happen when I come home, he wanted to know. The foot not going to grow back, Grace. I said it might, and he laugh-cried a little but shook his head. It won’t. So I looked. I got off the bed, turned around, and lifted the cheap white cotton sheets stamped PROPERTY OF GENERAL HOSPITAL—DO NOT REMOVE and saw bloody bandages crisscrossed around a swollen stump resting on a halo of bright red blood on the bedspread. The abattoir filled my nostrils again, and I fell to the white-tiled floor.
When the chance came for me to leave the village, our house was split down the middle with the logic of King Solomon: he wanted me to go and see the world, and she wanted me to stay. Helen said I’d be crazy to stay. And besides, if I went then I could send for her. I left. And for fourteen months my mother had been trying to get me to come back.
BY 6:00 P.M. I was frantic. The Bruckners hadn’t called. They weren’t going to call. They would have called already if I had got the job. I toyed with the idea of calling to confirm that I hadn’t got the job but didn’t because the possibility existed that maybe just maybe they were still going to call. This morning I had bought another Irish Echo, and there had been nothing. Not one single ad to fit my size. It was Sol who’d screwed up my chance. Look at Grace’s long legs. How stupid could one man be? Especially if I was right and Miriam was pregnant. And Ettie too. Are you sure you want to be a nanny, Grace, and not a fashion model in New York City? The phone rang, and I screamed, making Micky jump and Derek snap his head and Dame smile. It rang again. “You answer it, Mick.” Derek reached for the phone, and I grabbed the receiver before he could get it.
“Hello?”
It was Kathy. “Any news yet?”
I was relieved and disappointed. “Nope. I thought you might be them, actually.” I felt I owed Micky and Derek an explanation. “Kathy. Keep working.”
“Minding your stepchildren?”
“Uh-huh. Home lesson around the kitchen table. There wasn’t anything in the Echo today.”
“I saw. And you didn’t renew your ad, right?”
“Righto. Anyhow. What you up to?”
Kath inhaled. “I’m actually calling to ask you for a favor next week.” She wasn’t talking like a Jamaican.
“Sure, Kath. What you need me to do?”
“Babysit.”
“Babysit who?”
“This little boy here.”
“All right, stop the shorthand. Tell me what’s going on.” I got up from the kitchen table and walked into the hallway.
“Okay, next Monday we going to City Hall to get the license, and I need someone to watch this child. It won’t be for long. I’ll pay you.”
I stopped pacing. “Oh, my God. You and Donovan, Kath?”
“No, idiot. How it could be Donovan? Is the man he find for me.”
“Oh.” I did feel like an idiot. “Oh. You don’t have to pay me, Kath. What time you planning on going?”
“Around nine-thirty.”
“It doesn’t sound like a problem to me.”
“And Sylvia?”
“It should be okay. I can always bring Dame. But hey”—I expected her to be a little more excited—“you’re well on your way, Kath.”
“I guess so, but, Grace, this means for sure that Donovan not leaving his wife anytime soon. If I’m married to someone else, he has an excuse to stay married to her for years.”
I didn’t know that Donovan had promised Kathy to leave his wife.
“You think I should do it, Grace?”
“I can’t tell you what to do, Kath. But what more important to you? To be Donovan’s wife, or to get your papers and start living your life?” I didn’t mean to rhyme.
She laughed a little. “Well, still tell Sylvia you need to come to the city Monday.”
“Okay. The other night Bo and I were talking—”
“Grace, somebody coming. I have to go, bye.”
In the kitchen, Derek and Micky were fighting over a pencil. “Give it back, stoopid. Is mines.”
“Nuh-uh”—Micky yanked hard—“my mother buy this pencil for me on Pitkin Avenue.”
“Nuh-uh, my father buy this pencil for me at the corner store,” Derek said.
“You lie, Derek. Your father in the G Building.”
“You lie, Micky. And you don’t have no father.”
“Grace.”
I walked back into the kitchen and, in an act that would horrify King Solomon, snapped the pencil in two. “Happy now?”
SYLVIA DIDN’T COME IN alone that night. As if belatedly answering my wish for company, she came in around seven-thirty with Dodo, Bo, and Nello, Chinese food, two six-packs of Bud, and a bottle of red rum. Bo and Nello were already drunk, and Sylvia, after telling Nello to keep his hands in his pockets, went to the kitchen to dish out food. As soon as Dodo walked into the living room, she changed the channel.
“Come on, man,” I said, “you can’t just come and take over the TV.”
“Watch me,” she said and clicked around the stations.
I got off the couch and grabbed the remote.
“But what the ass is this? Child, give me back that remote. Well, I never see more. Sylvia!”
I changed back to our channel, and she tried to wrestle the remote from me. She laughed while she did it, and I laughed too, but I knew she was mad.
Nello clapped
and did a James Brown dance. He was a little mouse man with big front teeth who swore his grandparents had been Grenadian. Sylvia said any West Indian he had in him had already washed away and that he was pure black American. But Nello claimed the Caribbean. Now, in early March, he wore a hibiscus-splashed shirt and baggy linen pants.
“Look fight, boy,” he said to Bo. “Ain’t nothing I like more than to see two woman fighting. Place your bet, man. I betting on Black Beauty.”
“Dodo and Grace,” Sylvia shouted from the kitchen. “Stop playing the ass in front my children.”
Her children were loving it. Derek said, “Grace, Grace, throw it.” And Micky, bug-eyed and dancing on tiptoes, sucked her two middle fingers and laughed.
Bo studied us from the entry. “You see Dodo looking maga maga like she don’t have no strength, but don’t trust skinny woman, boy. They have hidden depths.”
Sylvia shouted again. “Dodo and Grace, don’t make me have to come and slap the two of you. Stop it.”
Dodo wouldn’t let up. She dug her long, nasty nails into my ribs, and I whacked her head with the remote. Her hard face hardened. “Oh, you serious now? Is fight you want to fight?”
“You can’t just come from where you come from and take over.” I wanted to hit her again. “Bo, I wrong?”
Nello put both hands on his hips. “No, Black Beauty, you not wrong at all.”
Dodo, breathing like a bull and pocketbook hanging from her side, faced me. Calmly, she said, “Grace, give me that fucking remote control right now.”
“I didn’t know church ladies could cuss.”
Nello adjusted his balls. Bo said, “The two of you is real ass for two big woman. Dodo, I find you wrong, you know. You can’t just waltz in and change channel.”
She unstrung her pocketbook and, before I realized what she was doing, swung it hard at me.
“Bitch!” I dropped the remote and reached for her. Bo, sensing the joke was done, grabbed me from behind.
Nello didn’t like that. “Leave them let them fight, man.”
“Put me down!” I was kicking him. “Bo, put me down!”
Sylvia came in from the kitchen. “Grace, I expect better from you, man.”
“What? Tell your ugly sister that. I thought she was a Christian.”
Sylvia walked over to the couch and took the remote from Dodo. I laughed, “ha ha,” thinking she was going to give it to me. Instead she aimed and turned off the TV. Then she walked over to the breakfront and switched on the radio, filling the room with loud calypso. She put both her hands in the air as if in surrender, turned her head Egyptian profile sharp, and swung her huge hips from side to side. “Okay, everybody win. We come up the road to party tonight, not for foolishness.”
I was only a little satisfied. “She still start it.”
“And I finish it. Go in the kitchen and take some Chinese food and a beer. Bo and Nello, come on, man, we say we having a nice lime tonight. Bring the rum. Grace, you not eating?”
“I can’t eat Chinese, remember?”
“Oh shit, yes. I forget. Well, heat up some turkey curry in the michaelwave.”
“Okay, Sylvia.” I didn’t want to spoil her good mood.
I decided to be magnanimous to Dodo. “Can I get you anything from the kitchen, Dodo?” You could see in her face she wanted to say something nasty, but instead she crossed her skinny legs, drew extra long on her cigarette, and said, “Thanks, I’ll taste a little rum when them boys bring it.” She rattled some phlegm and got her spitbox. “It good for the cold on my chest.”
By nine o’clock Derek and Micky were in bed and the little fete was going strong. Garçon, the super from Haiti, had banged on the ceiling twice with a broomstick, and each time Sylvia turned the music up a little louder. I had two beers and was dancing with Nello, who kept trying to pull me closer. Sylvia was doing her hands-up gyration, and Dodo, drunk on red rum, had restrung her pocketbook around her body and was trying to shake what she didn’t have. Bo, the bottle of rum held steadily to his head, crashed around the living room singing along to every calypso whether he knew the lyrics or not. Once I thought I heard the phone ring. Two beers weren’t enough to make me drunk, but my head was spinning. I only wanted to dance. “ ’Cause, we havin’ a par-tay, a par-tay.”
This time I was sure I heard the phone and pulled away from clutching Nello to answer it in the kitchen. “Hello?”
“Grace? It’s Miriam Bruckner. Sounds like someone’s having a party.”
“Mrs. Bruckner? Hi. Yes, it’s my cousin’s birthday and we’re having a little lime . . . a party, for her.” The lie came without thought.
“Miriam. We wanted to let you know that we’ve decided to offer you the job. Ben liked you best. Sol and I think you’re good with him, and the grandparents were very impressed by you. So, if you’re still interested the job is yours.”
I squeezed the receiver so hard the veins in my wrist bulged and my palm hurt. I got the job. I got the job. They hired me over the newsstand woman, and the baby-nurse woman, and the mole woman. Over everybody. Me! Now I had my own reason to party. “Judy, when you go in town, girl.”
“Yes, Mrs. Miriam. I’m still interested.” I wasn’t making any sense. The noise from the living room pounded in my head. I tried to be calm. “When do you want me to start?”
“Tonight.”
I thought I hadn’t heard her right. “I’m sorry?” I held my breath.
“We need you to come in tonight.”
How could I go in tonight? Who would help Sylvia with the children in the morning? But if I told Miriam no, she would call the newsstand woman and offer her the job. “Miriam, it’s after nine. I can’t take the train alone this late. Maybe I could come early in the morning?”
“Grace, we need you tonight. This time only I’ll pay for a cab, and you’d be doing us a huge favor. Now, can you do it?”
Music blasted from the living room.
Judith, when you go in town, girl
Judith, when you go in town, girl
Watch how you movin’ around, child
’Cause on Tuesday night, when them men get tight
They don’t care who get bite.
“Okay. I’ll be there in about an hour.”
“Thank you, Grace. Ben will be thrilled to see you in the morning.”
She hung up, and I held the receiver in my hand. Sylvia was screaming, and Bo too. They were clapping and stomping, and I thought, Yes, yes, yes. I got the job! I walked down the hall to the living room. “I got the job,” I said. No one heard, so I turned down the volume on the radio. “Sylvia, the woman call. I get the work.”
Finally she heard. “You get it? They just call? I didn’t even hear the phone. All right.” She shrugged. “So something else to party about. When you starting?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?” Sylvia, Bo, and Dodo answered together.
“What stupidness is this I hearing? They want you to come in tonight? And you going?” She turned the sound completely off. “Grace, don’t let them white people take you and make you they ass. Who ever hear somebody getting call to go for a job in the middle of the night?”
Nello, red-eyed drunk, slurred, “All kind of people go to work in the middle of the night.” Reeling, he ticked them off on his pencil-stub fingers. “Policeman, nurse woman, fireman. Welcome to America, coconuts, the city that never sleeps.”
“Nello. Shut your ass, please.” Sylvia turned back to me. “Grace, use your head. For a bright girl sometimes you very stupid, you know. Why them people call you to come in the middle of the night, and on a Tuesday night to boot? Look, call that woman and tell she you coming in the morning.”
Sylvia and Bo and Dodo and Nello were looking at me. The radiator hissed, and I could feel the cool air from the window Bo had cracked to catch a breeze. The room was now very quiet.
“I already told her I’m coming.”
Dodo laughed. “Sylvia, long time now I warn you about this girl.
”
“No, Dodo”—Sylvia sounded rational—“Grace have to live she life. I don’t want she to stay for me.” She turned to me. “Grace, use your head. Why they want you to come like a thief in the middle of the night?”
She was right, I knew, but I’d already made up my mind. “Sylvia, I don’t know. But I’m going. I could use the little bag?”
Drunk as he was, Bo said, “Grace girl, listen to Sylvia. She living in America plenty longer than you.”
“I know that, Bo. Sylvia, I could borrow the bag?”
“Take the bag, Grace. You is a big woman, and I can’t stop you from doing what you want to do. Okay”—she dusted her palms—“that is it. Party done.”
“No, don’t stop.” I reached to turn up the volume.
“Leave off that radio,” Sylvia snapped. “And go if you going. It getting late.”
Chapter 10
Sol opened the door in his robe, gave me a bear hug, and thanked me for coming. “Mir and Ben are sleeping, but you can watch the game with me. You like basketball?” He made a fake shot and his robe hung open.
I was tired to my bones. “Thanks, Sol. I need to go to sleep.”
“Okay, I’ll turn it down for you.” He touched my shoulder. “It’s good to see you again, Grace.”
I didn’t say it, but it felt good to be there.
By quarter past seven the next morning, I was up and in the shower to be ready for eight. Two minutes later, someone knocked on my bathroom door. “Yes?”
“Grace, it’s Miriam. We need you out here.”
Minding Ben Page 9