by Leone Ross
‘Stupid bitch,’ he says. ‘Stupid fucking bitch.’ But soon he cares less, and says it when he passes her as he’s sweeping, and as he puts filo pastry, with fresh bananas, passion fruit sauce and black pepper ice cream in front of her. ‘Stupid bitch, I hope it makes you fat and ugly.’
She looks away, smiling into the distance.
A diner complains.
‘Each time I come here, that woman is served something exquisite, off menu. Last week it was out-of-season cherries with kirsch. Last month it was an upside down tomato tart with olive sugar. Why does the chef show such favouritism?’
The young waiter rushes over. ‘Madame, that is because she is a stupid bitch, and he is a cruel bastard.’
‘Oh my,’ says the disgruntled diner.
That evening, the waiter is fired. Before he leaves, he pisses in the fish stew on the stove, throws out a batch of very expensive hybrid vodka and flashes his cock at the calm and waiting woman sitting at the table. She is circling her wrists and pointing her pretty toes under the tablecloth. Her backbone makes a crackling noise.
‘What are you waiting for?’ he screams at her, as sous chef and maître d’ wrestle him out. ‘What are you waiting for him to give you?’
She answers him, but there is a noise in the walls of the restaurant and so he cannot hear what she says.
*
In the lateness of the night, she rises from the table. After these many years, she has become attuned to the restaurant, and to her beloved. She can hear the eaves sigh in the wind, feel the dining-room chairs sag with relief as the frenetic energy of the day finally draws to a close.
She pushes open the door to the kitchen and steps in, light.
The chef is slumped over a stained steel surface, tired, a good wine at his head. He looks up and smiles at her. It is the best part of his day. The love of the restaurant around him, and now, this sweet woman. She leans on the work surface and faces him, smiling back.
He remembers her complaining, wailing friends. One tried to get the restaurant shut down. Another threatened arson. Her brother, he was the worst. He came to the chef’s home, and begged.
‘If she does this, my friend, she will give up everything. Home. Job. The chance of children. And worst of all, she will be second best. You make her second best.’
‘I know,’ the chef said. ‘But she is stubborn.’
He has learned to live with guilt. Some days, he thinks it is harder for him. So many of the staff become angry, especially the women. To love them both is tiring. But he has come to respect the woman’s choice.
He groans, content, as she steps behind him, puts her arms around him, nestles into the sensitive skin of his neck.
‘Hello, my love,’ she says.
He reaches behind him, hooks his hands at the small of her back. They look up, towards the ceiling, as if making architectural decisions.
‘Has anything changed?’ she asks, as she has every night, for years.
They listen to the restaurant, creaking and warm.
‘No,’ he sighs.
‘Ah then,’ she says. ‘Perhaps, tomorrow.’
They kiss.
It is the same as it always is, except it seems to them both that the kiss deepens and ripens, year on year. First he kisses her eyelids, brushing his lips over lashes and the small wrinkles beginning to sprout nearby. He swallows her breath, and she his. They lick each other like small animals at their mother’s hide, nipping, careful, so they do not hurt, or encourage fire. They are slow and careful and respectful, listening to the room around them. He can taste her smile on his lips. She can feel the change in his body, the way his skin thickens when she touches him, the shrug of his shoulders as he controls himself, again. She thinks that if there is one single night when his wanting is gone, she will leave this place – if there is one night when his shoulders flatten and the kiss is the kiss of a brother.
He makes a small, grunting noise against her lips.
‘Ah.’
So quiet.
She can feel the kick of his penis against his belly, and the love in his fingertips, as he pulls his face away and kisses her fingers.
She is happy.
Few, she finds, understand.
*
The woman who lives in the restaurant stays there until her hair turns grey and her muscles soften. The chef dies at home, in his bed, thinking of her and of his restaurant. A week later, the maître d’ finds her still and cooling body, her head on the soft white cloth of the table, and thinks again, as he often has done, about slicing off her still-juicy lips and sautéing them in butter to make a pie. He tries to move her body, but finds that her atrophied feet are welded to the floor. He yanks and tugs, calls for help, and several men pull and push, saying, ‘Well now, be careful, respect to the lady dead’ and all that, but there is no success. Eventually they stop when the restaurant begins to creak and to roll dangerously, like a ship listing on a bad sea.
By the time the maître d’ returns with an undertaker and a pickaxe, the woman’s feet have become tile like the floor; her body is no longer flesh but velvet, and her eyes are glass beads. In fact, as the maître d’ looks on, he sees that the woman has become nothing more than an expensive dining chair, pulled up to the table, and perfect for it.
‘Love,’ grunts the maître d’. He is very old. He taps the restaurant walls and leaves them to it.
SMILE
They meet and say things; ornate kisses; she feasts on the corner of his mouth. ‘Hush,’ she says, and his shoulders unpeel. He does what he says he’ll do: call, email, arrive. It makes her friends jealous. He feeds her avocado rolls. She goes without make-up and sleeveless, because she feels beautiful. He’s glad she listens to him. He resurrects ambitions.
It’s not too late, they think, to be happy.
One Thursday, he shows her his red erection; they’re not lovers yet and she laughs: ‘What are you doing?’ He wants to share all his feelings. When he was small, his father nailed a smile to his face: ‘It makes your mother happy, son.’ So now he smiles, regardless.
‘I think we’ll do forever,’ he says.
‘You can’t say that,’ she says.
She’s waited on forever, forever, but now she’s frightened she won’t get it.
Thirteen months hurry, hurry hurry past and then he leaves her. Not for want of love, but because they hurry hurry hurry. He shows her the tears on his smiling lips before he goes.
*
Her chest stops; she’s used to him; there are no colours. The sound of things is like booming. She finds the heart of a steer but it makes her pant. The heart of a wise man floats outside her dress and bleeds on her shoes.
‘Jesus,’ she says and lies on someone’s floor.
Cats come and sniff.
If his mother was still alive she would say: ‘You can stop now, son; stop smiling.’
COVENANT
Have you turned the tape recorder on yet? Maybe you should let me collect my thoughts first. This might be one of your harder debriefing sessions.
I’m not saying I don’t want to tell you; this is one of the reasons I came to the Covenant. I like the idea of sharing in this way. It brings us all closer together. I just don’t know where to start.
OK. Wherever I like?
OK.
It was easy to leave Abe, in the end – after turning it over so many times in my mind. I wasn’t happy. I wanted more. I did try. For nearly ten years. Straight out of my father’s house, into Abe’s arms.
I haven’t thought about my father for a while. But mornings like this, they make me think of home. So clear and silent. I’d wake Daddy up so he could get me ready for school. All the men in my life sleep hard. I’ve set out Abe’s clothes for a business meeting, I’ve read books with my bedside lamp blaring in his face, I’ve walked up and down the bedroom with Zak teething and wailing, and that man kept right on – itching, fidgeting, farting and sleeping. About a month ago I lay beside him and stuck him with a
pin. It slid in like butter. I tried different parts of his body, near to the bone, through his belly, deeper each time. He just flapped at me like I was a fly. Didn’t open his eyes. I did it for ten minutes. He was covered with tiny pools of blood. I lay there and I thought, Boy, you could sleep for Jamaica.
I didn’t do a lot of sleeping in those last weeks before I left. I sat up and did crochet. Baskets and blankets. The darkness meant I didn’t have to pretend I was okay. Two o’ clock in the morning made the bruises on my hands fade away. It was so quiet, just the noise of cars in the distance. I pretended I could hear my neighbours in bed, breathing. In their perfect existences.
Mamma painted my room pink before she left; that’s what my father told me. Then, when she was gone, there were pink sheets, an army of Barbies and a birthday party every year. Bouncy castles and jugglers. Bottles of perfume, a diamante choker, a golden diary with a matching pen, high-heeled shoes. When I got older, the boys had to come into the front room and sit on the mahogany sofa and state their intentions.
When I was eight, me and Mary-Anne Teddington snapped the heads off all my Barbies. I think we wanted to see what was inside. We cut off their hair and laid them out in a row on the bed, admiring them. My father came in and started to shout, ‘You know how much dem tings cost?’ He cussed out Mary-Anne until she bawled, and he told her mother she couldn’t play with me anymore. Then he took me on his lap and hushed me. Said he knew his little girl wouldn’t ever break the dolls he bought her. When he put me to bed, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing Mary-Anne’s big brown eyes fill with tears. I fell asleep, looking at the doll hair in the wastepaper basket.
Golden curls.
Sorry, I’m rambling. Is this the kind of detail you want to hear? I told you, leaving was simple. I went into Zak’s room, and I stood there for a bit, looking at the moons and stars on his bedroom ceiling. Abe painted them with a special fluorescent light you can see in the dark. He painted waves around the edge of the walls. He could be kind, even with all that hand-to-hand combat.
I woke Zak up. He rolled over and looked at me with his face full of sleep. Eyes like wet river stones. He let me dress him, not a whimper. His cheek was warm against my face, leaning against me, still dozing. Just like his father. He asked me, ‘Mamma, whatcha doin?’ and I said, ‘We’re going on an adventure, baby.’ His face was speckled with those moons and stars.
He went to sleep again in the back of the car. I was worried that he’d roll off the seat when I reversed, but he didn’t. He just lay there, sucking his thumb. Abe doesn’t like the suck-thumb business. He used to slap Zak’s wrist, not hard. Told me that if we were still in Jamaica he would get aloe vera and smear it on Zak’s fingers. You ever see fresh aloe vera? No, I guess you haven’t. Anyway, it tastes metallic, really bad.
A couple of hours later I was driving down the A20 thinking that doing it at night isn’t so scary, especially when you’re driving towards freedom. The road was well lit, and you signposted really well. Every few miles that little red arrow and THE COVENANT. I’ve appreciated all your support, how you knew I’d be coming a long way, and at night, with a child. When you told me on the phone that you’d booked us into a hotel, I was really pleased. Did you know I was getting choked up? You didn’t, did you? I’m very good at hiding my feelings. It’s been essential.
Cars passed us sometimes. My hands had stopped shaking, and I was desperate for a smoke, but it was too cold to crack a window, and I didn’t want to fill the car with fumes. Zak frowns at me when I smoke. Like his daddy.
My father didn’t believe that little girls should run. Or be untidy. So I joined the track team. My father didn’t believe that little girls should smell bad, so I didn’t brush my teeth for days. I stank through half of third form until the personal development programme teacher took me into the nurse’s office and pressed a gift pack on me. Deodorant and soap and body spray and toothpaste. I went into the school bathroom afterwards and rubbed my sanitary pads on the walls. The streaks went brown across the graffiti. Obliterated all the Susanne-heart-Bobbies and the I-love-Adrians.
We got to the Holiday Inn and the receptionist lowered her voice when she saw Zak snoring in my arms. She buzzed a boy to take the luggage, and we got into the elevator and watched the lights on the panel run up, one, two, three, fourth floor. I was near to dropping when we got to the room. The boy helped me put Zak on the bed, and we stood there and watched him, spit leaking out of the side of his mouth onto the pillow. The bag boy grinned and told me he was a lovely lad. ‘He looks just like you,’ he told me, heading out the door. Everybody says that.
*
Having Zak was Abe’s idea, but I was desperate enough to agree. Normal, normal, normal, I kept thinking. Give up the dreams, Sarah and deal with reality. Being who I really was, that was out of the question. Easier to be a good girl. The punches and the screams were less complicated.
Hagar was less complicated.
She sat there in my living room, wiggling her dirty toes in her housework slippers. She had perfect young skin, even with a spray of acne on her left cheek. We told her that there was nothing wrong with Abe’s sperm; just me, barren, empty. Abe was trying to go on like it was a small thing while he was talking; I guess he was trying to make me feel better. When we were done, the little bitch just sat there, wiggling her toes, looking confused.
‘So… Missa Abe, me an’ you…?’ she said.
He cleared his throat. I looked at her toes, and she looked at her toes. Abe laughed. He was like a little pickney in a toy store, and I wondered whether he was enjoying it. He put a hand on her shoulder. I sat there thinking, you should be touching my shoulder. And he said, ‘No, no, Hagar. Not at all like that. I’ll provide you with the um…’
She didn’t say anything, but there was a little smile on her face.
Abe tried again: ‘You know, Hagar. I will… um… get some of my… and give it to you, and what you need to do is…’ Then he looked at me. Woman’s business, I could hear him thinking. So I said, ‘Hagar, what me and Mr Abe want you to do is take some of his spirit, you know, spirit? And put it inside your body, in your privates. It has to be a special time. When do you see your monthlies?’
She giggled, with her bleeding, fertile self. I thought maybe I was being unfair. She was young and ignorant and it was we who were taking advantage of her, after all. That was when she looked up straight into my husband’s face, like I wasn’t there. Confident as anything.
‘I can only do it God way,’ she said. We stared at her. I don’t think Abe knew what she meant right away, but I knew exactly what the bitch wanted. ‘If you want it, me have to do it God way.’
Abe is a handsome man, but she never had to make it so obvious. I sat there thinking, she thinks she can have him. She thinks she can tie him to her, with her tight body.
He looked at me. I gritted my teeth and told him I’d think about it.
*
I sat on that hotel bed that night and wondered about coming here, and what it would feel like to do everything I wanted to do. Normal isn’t the same for everybody. I started to grin, then chuckle, then before I knew it I was muffling the sound of my laughter in the pillow, so I wouldn’t wake Zak up. I lay there with my whole body shaking… joyous. So thankful for the Covenant. So thankful for you, and the morning you came to my house, like an inside-out Jehovah’s Witness. You get so isolated. I never knew I’d meet another woman who felt the same way I did. You put it all out there: that I had to be sure, that I’d never be able to go back. I was drunk with happiness. We all expect failure – to not get everything we want in this life. It’s the dream that could be realised that plays with your head at night, that tempts you and asks you if you dare reach out and take it. You told me I was special. I always knew I was.
When I was a little girl, I pulled the wings off butterflies and took them to show my father. I told him that I pulled the wings off the butterflies, me, Daddy, me, me. But he kept saying that maybe some kinds of butterfli
es shed their wings before they die, and he went and looked in the encyclopaedia, and when he couldn’t find the reference he wanted to fit into his pastel pink world, he patted me on the head and told me not to cry. I stood there and I yelled into his face, ‘I’m not crying.’
I told him that I hated my first form teacher, because she picked boogers out of her nose and wiped them on her shirt, and I told him that I didn’t like the girl who sat next to me in class all through fourth form because she was ugly, and I told him that sometimes when I go on those nice dates with those nice boys, Daddy, I want them to lift up my shirt and suck on my nipples, yes, I do, I do, but he just sat there, with this grin on his face, saying that I was so sweet, so beautiful, Daddy’s best girl, your mother would be proud of you if she was here, and I started wondering if I was just opening my mouth and no sounds were coming out.
I went off into the backyard afterwards and followed red ants through the dust, around the lignum vitae trees, watching them carry leaves, like a tiny army. They looked like a trail of blood through the yard. That was a good morning. I picked them up and popped them between my finger and thumb and sniffed the mush on my hands. One bit me: I can still see its jaws opening and crunching down. It hurt like hell, but I was happy. At least the ant saw me. Felt me. Acknowledged the danger before I crushed it into obscurity.
I didn’t know it then, but now that I think about it, things started to change the night my husband had sex with the maid. He was gone for two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes of my life. For the first fifteen I couldn’t get the pictures out of my head. I imagined him using the tricks he used on me. The way he kissed my lips, gently, and that look in his eyes when I took my clothes off in front of him. The way he brought the palms of his hands up, around my sides, leaving the cupping of my breasts until the very last minute.