Lucy: A Novel

by Kincaid, Jamaica

  As I was telling Mariah all these things, all sorts of little details of my life on the island where I grew up came back to me: the color of six o’clock in the evening sky on the day I went to call the midwife to assist my mother in the birth of my first brother; the white of the chemise that my mother embroidered for the birth of my second brother; the redness of the red ants that attacked my third brother as he lay in bed next to my mother a day after he was born; the navy blue of the sailor suit my first brother wore when my father took him to a cricket match; the absence of red lipstick on my mother’s mouth after they were all born; the day the men from the prison in their black-and-white jail clothes came to cut down a plum tree that grew in our yard, because one of my brothers had almost choked to death swallowing whole a plum he picked up from the ground.

  I suddenly had to stop speaking; my mouth was empty, my tongue had collapsed into my throat. I thought I would turn to stone just then. Mariah wanted to rescue me. She spoke of women in society, women in history, women in culture, women everywhere. But I couldn’t speak, so I couldn’t tell her that my mother was my mother and that society and history and culture and other women in general were something else altogether.

  Mariah left the room and came back with a large book and opened it to the first chapter. She gave it to me. I read the first sentence. “Woman? Very simple, say the fanciers of simple formulas: she is a womb, an ovary; she is a female—this word is sufficient to define her.” I had to stop. Mariah had completely misinterpreted my situation. My life could not really be explained by this thick book that made my hands hurt as I tried to keep it open. My life was at once something more simple and more complicated than that: for ten of my twenty years, half of my life, I had been mourning the end of a love affair, perhaps the only true love in my whole life I would ever know.

  LUCY

  IT WAS JANUARY AGAIN; the world was thin and pale and cold again; I was making a new beginning again.

  I had been a girl of whom certain things were expected, none of them too bad: a career as a nurse, for example; a sense of duty to my parents; obedience to the law and worship of convention. But in one year of being away from home, that girl had gone out of existence.

  The person I had become I did not know very well. Oh, on the outside everything was familiar. My hair was the same, though now I wore it cut close to my head, and this made my face seem almost perfectly round, and so for the first time ever I entertained the idea that I might actually be beautiful. I knew that if I ever decided I was beautiful I would not make too big a thing of it. My eyes were the same. My ears were the same. The other important things about me were the same.

  But the things I could not see about myself, the things I could not put my hands on—those things had changed, and I did not yet know them well. I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition. I did not have anything exactly in mind, but when the picture was complete I would know. I did not have position, I did not have money at my disposal. I had memory, I had anger, I had despair.

  I was born on an island, a very small island, twelve miles long and eight miles wide; yet when I left it at nineteen years of age I had never set foot on three-quarters of it. I had recently met someone who was born on the other side of the world from me but had visited this island on which my family had lived for generations; this person, a woman, had said to me, “What a beautiful place,” and she named a village by the sea and then went on to describe a view that was unknown to me. At the time I was so ashamed I could hardly make a reply, for I had come to believe that people in my position in the world should know everything about the place they are from. I know this: it was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493; Columbus never set foot there but only named it in passing, after a church in Spain. He could not have known that he would have so many things to name, and I imagined how hard he had to rack his brain after he ran out of names honoring his benefactors, the saints he cherished, events important to him. A task like that would have killed a thoughtful person, but he went on to live a very long life.

  I had realized that the origin of my presence on the island—my ancestral history—was the result of a foul deed; but that was not what made me, at fourteen or so, stand up in school choir practice and say that I did not wish to sing “Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never, never shall be slaves,” that I was not a Briton and that until not too long ago I would have been a slave. My action did not create a scandal; instead, my choir mistress only wondered if all their efforts to civilize me over the years would come to nothing in the end. At the time, my reasons were quite straightforward: I disliked the descendants of the Britons for being unbeautiful, for not cooking food well, for wearing ugly clothes, for not liking to really dance, and for not liking real music. If only we had been ruled by the French: they were prettier, much happier in appearance, so much more the kind of people I would have enjoyed being around. I once had a pen pal on a neighboring island, a French island, and even though I could see her island from mine, when we sent correspondence to each other it had to go to the ruler country, thousands of miles away, before reaching its destination. The stamps on her letter were always canceled with the French words for liberty, equality, and fraternity; on mine there were no such words, only the image of a stony-face, sour-mouth woman. I understand the situation better now; I understand that, in spite of those words, my pen pal and I were in the same boat; but still I think those words have a better ring to them than the image of a stony-face, sour-mouth woman.

  One day I was a child and then I was not. Everyone told me this: You are no longer a child. I had started to menstruate, I grew breasts, tufts of hair appeared under my arms and between my legs. I grew taller all of a sudden, and it was hard to manage so much new height all at once. One day I was living silently in a personal hell, without anyone to tell what I felt, without even knowing that the feelings I had were possible to have; and then one day I was not living like that at all. I had begun to see the past like this: there is a line; you can draw it yourself, or sometimes it gets drawn for you; either way, there it is, your past, a collection of people you used to be and things you used to do. Your past is the person you no longer are, the situations you are no longer in.

  * * *

  I used to be nineteen; I used to live in the household of Lewis and Mariah, and I used to be the girl who took care of their four children; I used to stand over the children, four girls, at the street corner, waiting for the stoplight to change color; I used to sit on a lakeshore with them; I used to sit in the kitchen, with the inevitable sun streaming through the window, with Mariah, drinking coffee she learned to make in France, and trying to explain to myself, by speaking to Mariah, how I got to feel the way I even now feel; I used to see Mariah with happiness an essential part of her daily existence, and then, when the perfect world she had known for so long vanished without warning, I saw sadness replace it; I used to lie naked in moonlight with a boy named Hugh; I used to not know who Lewis was, until one day he revealed himself to be just another man, an ordinary man, when I saw him in love with his wife’s best friend; I used to be that person, and I used to be in those situations. That was how I had spent the year just past.

  One day I was living in the large apartment of Lewis and Mariah (without Lewis, of course, for he had gone to live somewhere else all by himself, allowing a decent amount of time to pass before he gave Mariah the surprise of her life: he had fallen out of love with her because he had fallen in love with her best friend, Dinah), and the next day I was not.

  My leaving began on the night I heard my father had died. When I had left my parents, I had said to myself that I never wanted to see them again. These were words said in the way of a child; for a child might want someone dead, might even wish to do the deed herself, but would want the dead person to get up and carry on as before, only without the th
ing that made the child wish for the death in the first place. I had wished never to see my father again, and my wish had become true: I would never see my father again. I wondered how he looked in the coffin; I wondered who had made the coffin and if it was made of pine or mahogany; I wondered if he had been buried in his blue serge suit, the one he always saved for the special occasion that never seemed to come—perhaps my mother would have thought his burial was the special occasion. I had never imagined my father dying. I had never imagined my parents dying. When I told Mariah this, she said that no one ever thinks their parents will die, ever, and I had to suppress the annoyance I felt at her for once again telling me about everybody when I told her something about myself. Mariah said that I was feeling guilty. Guilty! I had always thought that was a judgment passed on you by others, and so it was new to me that it could be a judgment you pass on yourself. Guilty! But I did not feel like a murderer; I felt like Lucifer, doomed to build wrong upon wrong.

  I had not been opening the letters my mother had been sending to me for months. In them she tried to give me a blow-by-blow description of how quickly the quality of her life had deteriorated since I had left her, but I only knew this afterward—after I had learned of my father’s death, written to her and sent her money, and then opened the letter she sent in reply. For if I had seen those letters sooner, one way or another I would have died. I would have died if I did nothing; I would have died if I did something. I then made a last reply to her, though she did not know she might never hear from me again. I told her that I would come home soon, and how sorry I was for everything that had happened to her. I did not say that I loved her. I could not say that. I then told her that the family I was living with (Lewis and Mariah) were moving to another part of town; the address I gave her was one I made up off the top of my head. The moment I did that was the moment I knew I would soon make living with Lewis and Mariah the past.

  After that, the days went by too slowly and too quickly: I could not wait to put this period of my life behind me, and each moment felt like a ball of lead; at the same time, I wanted to understand everything that was happening to me, and each day felt like a minute. It was gloomy inside the house, and gloomy outside, too. “The holidays are coming,” Mariah said. “The holidays are coming.” She should have been happy, but she said it as if she were expecting a funeral. The skies were hard and gray; it rained, and the rain felt like small, hard nails; the sun shone sometimes, but weakly, as if it held a grudge. I noticed how hard and cold and shut up tight the ground was. I noticed this because I used to wish it would just open up and take me in, I felt so bad. If I dropped dead from despair as I was crossing the street, I would just have to lie there in the cold. The ground would refuse me. To die in the cold was more than I could bear. I wanted to die in a hot place. The only hot place I knew was my home. I could not go home, and so I could not die yet.

  When I told Mariah that I was leaving, she had said, “It’s not a year yet. You are supposed to stay for at least a year.” Her voice was full of anger, but I ignored it. It’s always hard for the person who is left behind. And even as she said it she must have known how hollow it sounded, for it was only a matter of weeks before it would be a year since I had come to live with her. The reality of her situation was now clear to her: she was a woman whose husband had betrayed her. I wanted to say this to her: “Your situation is an everyday thing. Men behave in this way all the time. The ones who do not behave in this way are the exceptions to the rule.” But I knew what her response would have been. She would have said, “What a cliché.” She would have said, “What do you know about these things?” And she would have been right; it was a cliché, and I had no personal experience of a thing like that. But all the same, where I came from, every woman knew this cliché, and a man like Lewis would not have been a surprise; his behavior would not have cast a pall over any woman’s life. It was expected. Everybody knew that men have no morals, that they do not know how to behave, that they do not know how to treat other people. It was why men like laws so much; it was why they had to invent such things—they need a guide. When they are not sure what to do, they consult this guide. If the guide gives them advice they don’t like, they change the guide. This was something I knew; why didn’t Mariah know it also? And if I were to tell it to her she would only show me a book she had somewhere which contradicted everything I said—a book most likely written by a woman who understood absolutely nothing.

  The holidays came, and they did feel like a funeral because so many things had died. For the children’s sake, she and Lewis put up a good front. He came and went, doing all the things he would have done if he were still living with them. He bought the fir tree, bought the children the presents they wanted, bought Mariah a coat made up from the skins of a small pesty animal who lived in the ground. She, of course, hated it, but for appearances’ sake she kept her opinion to herself. He must have forgotten that she was not the sort of person who would wear the skin of another being if she could help it. Or perhaps in the rush of things he gave his old love his new love’s present. Mariah gave me a necklace made up of pretty porcelain beads and small polished balls of wood. She said it was the handiwork of someone in Africa. It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given me.

  The New Year came, and I was going somewhere new again. I gathered my things together; I had a lot more than when I first came. I had new clothes, all better suited to this new climate I now lived in. I had a camera and prints of the photographs I had taken, prints I had made myself. But mostly I had books—so many books, and they were mine; I would not have to part with them. It had always been a dream of mine to just own a lot of books, to never part with a book once I had read it. So there they were, resting nicely in small boxes—my own books, the books that I had read. Mariah spoke to me harshly all the time now, and she began to make up rules which she insisted that I follow; and I did, for after all, what else could she do? It was a last resort for her—insisting that I be the servant and she the master. She used to insist that we be friends, but that had apparently not worked out very well; now I was leaving. The master business did not become her at all, and it made me sad to see her that way. Still, it made me remember what my mother had said to me many times: for my whole life I should make sure the roof over my head was my own; such a thing was important, especially if you were a woman.

  On the day I actually left, there was no sun; the sky had shut it out tightly. It was a Saturday. Lewis had taken the children to eat snails at a French restaurant. All four of them liked such things—and just as well, for that went with the life they were expected to lead eventually. Mariah helped me put my things in a taxi. It was a cold goodbye on her part. Her voice and her face were stony. She did not hug me. I did not take any of this personally; someday we would be friends again. I was numb, but it was from not knowing just what this new life would hold for me.

  * * *

  The next day I woke up in a new bed, and it was my own. I had bought it with my money. The roof over my head was my own—that is, as long as I could afford to pay the rent for it. The curtains at my windows had loud, showy flowers printed on them; I had chosen this pattern over a calico that the lady in the cloth store had recommended. It did look vulgar in this climate, but it would have been just right in the climate I came from. Through the curtains I could see that the day was just like the one before: gray, the sky shut up tight, the sun locked out. I knew then that even though I would always notice the absence or presence of the sun, even though I would always prefer a sunny day to a day without sun, I would get used to it; I wouldn’t make an important decision based on the weather.

  It was Peggy who had found the apartment. We were then still best friends. We had nothing in common except that we felt at ease in each other’s company. From the moment we met we had recognized in each other the same restlessness, the same dissatisfaction with our surroundings, the same skin-doesn’t-fit-ness. That was as far as it went. We had accepted each other’s shortcomings and
differences; then, just when we began to feel the yoke of each other’s companionship, just when we began to feel the beginnings of what might eventually lead to lifelong loathing, we decided to move in together. It could have been worse. People marry at times like that; they then have ten children, live under the same roof for years and years, eventually die and arrange to be buried side by side. We only signed our names to a two-year lease.

  It was a Sunday. I could hear church bells ringing. I had not been to church in over a year—not since leaving home. I supposed I still believed in God; after all, what else could I do? But no longer could I ask God what to do, since the answer, I was sure, would not suit me. I could do what suited me now, as long as I could pay for it. “As long as I could pay for it.” That phrase soon became the tail that wagged my dog. If I had died then, it should have been my epitaph.

  Peggy, who had been living with her parents all along, decided not to do so anymore. She said that she was sick of them. She said it as if her parents were a style of dressing she had outgrown. I had never heard anyone speak of their parents in this way; I never even knew you could make them seem trivial, trinketlike, mere pests. I was not sure whether to admire her or feel sorry for her because she hadn’t got parents whose personalities were on a larger scale, parents whose presence you are reminded of with each breath you take. Someone had told Peggy about this vacancy; it had two bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. I had spent my entire life not knowing the luxury of plumbing, hot and cold tap water, the privacy to be had by closing the door and taking off your clothes and stepping into a bathtub and staying there for as long as it pleased you. I could very well have gone through my entire life without knowledge of such things, and on my list of unhappinesses this would not have made an appearance. But not so anymore. When I saw that the apartment had only one bathroom, I made note of it with disappointment. At Mariah and Lewis’s house I had my own bathroom, and my smells were known only to me. Here the windows in the back had bars—not the decorative kind to keep children from falling out, but the crisscross kind to keep people who meant us no good from coming in; the windows in the front allowed the sun, when it shone, to come in plenty. I used to lie in my bed at home, surrounded by all the things they say make for a contented life—a loving family, a safe full of food, harmonious surroundings—and not feel contented. I longed then to live in a place like this: bars on the windows to keep out people who might wish to do me harm, an unfriendly climate, uncertainty at every turn. History is full of great events; when the great events are said and done, there will always be someone, a little person, unhappy, dissatisfied, discontented, not at home in her own skin, ready to stir up a whole new set of great events again. I was not such a person, able to put in motion a set of great events, but I understood the phenomenon all the same.