Come Let Us Sing Anyway

by Leone Ross

  He’s been watching her bones for days. Vertebrae marching in demonstrations, tibia spattered in tear-gas, mandible seesawing under deep brown skin. Her electric ribs. He once thought of the skeleton as a frame; now he sees that it’s an orchestra.

  ‘And why are you here?’ she snaps.

  ‘I came to watch,’ he says. It’s what he does, in countries that are not his own.

  ‘You can stay,’ she says, and he laughs in his head at her naiveté. She turns back to the Ambassador, but her bones remain tethered to him. He shifts; her gold chain dances the length of her clavicle. He crosses his ankles; her kneecaps bounce. The Ambassador is restless; he becomes condescending, which makes her angrier. Nothing is accomplished. Her skull is fragile. When she leaves, the tight smile she gives him pours over the fourteen bones in her face.

  *

  Midnight: mosquitoes carolling, dogs howling, distant gunfire, brutal dry heat. He’s been away from home too long. He picks up the phone.

  The professor is retired; colleagues have died; alumni forget. He’s patient. Seven more calls. It’s what he does. Eight. Eleven. Then, finally, a familiar, gentle voice. He is fleetingly embarrassed, but relieved the man recognises his name. They exchange pleasantries, eventually fall silent. The professor waits.

  ‘There is a woman,’ says the agent.

  He can hear the old man smile down the line.

  ‘And?’

  ‘You told me to watch their b–’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  A moth flutters by, leaving dark dust on his earlobe.

  ‘The heart has no bones, son.’

  *

  He sits in the car watching as she takes the bottle of wine into her home. He hasn’t breathed since he stole it from the Ambassador’s locked cupboard, sweating hands staining the red ribbon, the card. She sits on the veranda with her girlfriends and they laugh together, pass the bottle hand to hand. He’s happy; she’s more than a revolutionary in her spare time.

  Someone turns on music. She steps into the garden, wine aloft. Her friends follow and they are laughing-laughing and her teeth tinkle. He laughs too, spincter tight, nose against the window, like a small boy.

  The women dance as she raises her arm and smashes the bottle to the ground.

  There is a small noise in his left ear.

  No doctor will ever confirm it, but he knows. It is the sound of his stirrup bone splintering: one tenth of an inch, the smallest bone in the human body.

  MUDMAN

  Matthew is his mother’s little mud man. This is what she calls him when he is very small, growing to be tall in the hills of Port Antonio in Jamaica. She holds him to her breasts when they return from the banks of the Rio Grande. When Matthew’s mother walks by the river, the fish cry. She watches the canoe men with the tourist women, slow-ripple waves filling her shallow eyes.

  Matthew’s daddy was a canoe man, spending his days tripping on-off, on-off the six-inch-high rafts, his feet muddy to the ankle and white with it. Matthew doesn’t know that his mother missed the smell of river mud in her bed until he came. Every day he follows her along the banks, playing in the mud until he is bored and white all over. Matthew’s mother holds him close to her and breathes him in. Matthew doesn’t know his daddy left with a tourist woman, even though the district gossips whisper it softly into the hills, tucking it around Matthew’s mother’s bedhead, until her mattress fills with shame and cruel laughter. Matthew is like all the boys he knows: a mummy’s boy because daddies aren’t real.

  Matthew grows to be a squashy boy, so tall he gives the neighbours crick-cracked necks, as soft as the inside of a cocoa pod, his palms and soles pink like raw cocoa, his head shiny and deep brown like the dried cocoa beans strewn in his mother’s back yard. She’s proud of the deep rolls of fat in his sides, the wideness of his bright young eyes, and his childbearing hips. He is tall and broad, but he feels small when she tells him it’s time for him to go to England. She tells him how kind his Auntie Susu is, how she will take care of him and show him how to smooth the magic of the great United Kingdom onto his elbows and forehead.

  Aunt Susu is rubbed raw from work. She smells of white people’s urine and pain and she walks with a bent back from scrubbing and tending people who hate her. She pushes a long sharp pin into the dreams that Matthew’s mother packed in his red suitcase, along with the bun and cheese and patties that the airport men took away. Aunt Susu sends Matthew to school and pats him on the head when he tells her that the people in London look at him as if a mongoose lives in his eyes. Matthew turns the pages of his schoolbooks, never seeing himself there, wondering about the way the girls call him names. At school he clings to the front gate and bows his head to all who look at him. He sweeps the classroom in the morning for the home-room teacher and picks small flowers from the spring breeze to leave on the desks of the white girls who look sad.

  When the black girl arrives at school Matthew sees the fire in her belly from as far as twenty paces. He watches her walk through the school as if she’s balancing on broken glass. He watches her erase the laughter on the faces of the boys who take Aunt Susu’s nursing money, leaving the imprint of their delicate hands on his skin. The black girl’s name is Leila and she is hard as Matthew is soft. She takes one boy by a handful of his red hair and spits in his face. Leila is brave for Matthew and he loves her as much as his mother loved his father. Matthew has nothing to give her, but he murmurs fragrant Jamaican songs into her plaits. She’s never heard songs like this. She calls him jungle bunny, this girl who is the same colour as him but has never seen green hills. She tells him stories of cold rain that makes no noise on the roof, and he tries to tell her what crickets sound like. They travel on the underground together, staring and giggling at women who kiss, watching rows of hands that disappear into newspapers. One day when Matthew is singing in Leila’s ear, a drunken man with dawn-sprung eyes tries to make the carriage join in the song. He tells the children they’re beautiful. They’re too afraid to smile, but they watch him sing a rousing solo, listening to the carriage people ignore him.

  God is good to Matthew. He gets him a job as a conductor on the buses. God chuckles down from pulpits in churches, bleeding and rib-bound, as Matthew makes the money to marry Leila. God cools Matthew’s brow when people pinch their coins between finger and thumb, never touching Matthew’s pink palms. Matthew likes his work. He sings as much as he can and always says thank you and please and have a nice day, young lady. Matthew sings the songs his mother taught him, wedges his hips between the shiny seats and brushes his head against the bus top. Matthew’s passengers complain that he can’t sing. That’s not what they mean. What they mean is that his songs are sad and that they can’t bear their homesickness. Matthew bows his head when the boss bans singing, and his eyes are white mud.

  When Matthew is twenty years old, Leila gives him a pair of orange-shaped twins. She plucks them out of her body like a canoe man kicking off from the shallow shore and then wraps the baby fat they left behind around her like a womb. Matthew doesn’t mind. The bed still creaks, the home is happy and he buys his wife clothes the colour of Port Antonio sunsets. Leila is in charge of spanking, though she’s careful for the social worker not to know. Matthew is in charge of play-fighting, of sitting on his children’s beds at night, holding them and feeding them bottles of thick milk. Matthew is in charge of touch, as his children grow too heavy for his wife to hold. Matthew’s family are fat as moons, and full of childish laughter.

  Matthew’s laughter stops three days after his children’s eighth birthday. His son is David and his daughter is Susan, and they go to their first birthday party, with cake and chips and jelly and ice cream. Matthew cannot afford chips and cakes and rainbow ice cream, so his children must attend this party. The lady having the party promises that she will drive David and Susan home. Susan is a small puddle on the floor as she tells Matthew about the long walk back, about the electric lights that steamed into the sky and the tiny policeman w
ho turned his back when they asked directions. She tells Matthew that David holds her hand very tight and says that a big star will guide them home. She tells Matthew that she saw the star and dropped David’s hand. That cold hit her back when she turned to see her brother stumbling, too slow to escape the man who caught him and held him close.

  Three months of questions pass and Matthew walks around his home, sweeping brittle pieces of Leila into his arms. He reads the newspapers on the way to work and counts the missing children in the headlines, all colours, all shapes, little knees and feet all gone, missing, under the stars. He is promoted and takes a deep breath when his boss tells him he is the best boy at the depot. He watches the child that London left him.

  Susan eats. She goes shopping with her mother and carries mountains of plantain to the tube station. In pretty parks she hop-skips over dog shit while she sucks pints of blackcurrant juice. In chippies she swallows strings of sausages and at home she burns her mind on pots of chicken stew. Her pillows make way for delicate choux pastry. She listens to an Italian waiter call her l’arancia bella, the beautiful orange, as she pastes her eyelids closed with garlic butter.

  One day Matthew is searching for the pieces of his wife under their new sofa, and a sparkling piece of her cheekbone speaks to him. She tells him that she’s tired of fighting. She calls him a weak man, and then blinks into nothing. The rest of her is too busy stroking Susan’s brow to notice. Matthew raises his head and watches his daughter stumble upstairs. It seems to him that she’s walking through the sea, through sand, one slow foot after another. He asks her to tell him the story of David again. Two years have passed and Susan can’t remember it all. She stutters through the old tale, but Matthew makes her tell it over and over, until she’s screaming. Leila saves her, turning burning eyes on her husband.

  Matthew knows what to do. His mind is full of his boy, running through sand and sea, his heavy feet not quick enough to escape the man who held him. He looks at pictures of his son refusing to run at sports day when they called him to the egg and spoon race. Matthew looks at the breadth of his own belly and knows that it’s his fault.

  Matthew visits pharmacies and bookstores and homeopaths. He flings away armfuls of dairy, carbohydrate and sugar, and all the time he sees David’s feet become lighter, lighter, whizzing through the air, changing the past. Matthew dices carrots and celery and buys new clothes and sees his son drawing nearer. He speaks to Leila in ways that make her obey. Matthew’s family shrink. They practice slipping down plugholes, through telephone wires; they dance together on the head of a pin.

  Matthew wakes up one day to the sound of Leila opening the door to the police. He walks downstairs and sees his wife trying to fit their son inside her. David’s eyes fill the kitchen, he cannot take them away from his sister, how tall she is, how slender. He pushes his mother into the stove and she bangs her leg against it; he slaps her. ‘You’re not my mother,’ he says, until the room echoes with it. Matthew falls to his knees and cries.

  David has not been touched with tenderness for years, and it shows. He can run now, but he runs from those who love him and he hides in the toilet. He sits in the garden, ripping up the grass. Susan whispers to him, but he climbs a tree and sits there for three days, until she stops. The social worker talks about abuse and post traumatic shock and time. Matthew knows he is running out of time. He goes to his son and tells him how much he loves him and how much he missed him.

  David laughs. ‘You don’t look like my father.’

  Matthew knows what to do. He must make it like it was. He asks Leila to bake. Together they rebuild the house until its roof is marzipan, its windows are smoky with chocolate mist and its carpets are sticky toffee. Leila makes dumplings and her hands drip with syrup. Susan gives up after-school drama club and painting and says no to her first dates, for there’s only time to eat. Matthew doesn’t buy new clothes; he allows his belly to flop over tailored trousers so that David will see the memories that kept him alive. The family grow fat as moons and try to laugh like children.

  Matthew watches David’s face for happiness, for recognition. David is as round as the rest, but still his eyes are crumpled pieces of paper. He spends his days and most of his nights away from his family, and comes home with strange piles of money, no note smaller than twenty.

  One day Matthew climbs into bed with David when he is asleep. He has a glass of warm milk in his hand. David is still dreaming, but he rolls on his tummy and presents his haunches, like a small dog waiting for mounting. Matthew vomits across Susan’s books.

  ‘I’m your father,’ he says to David. ‘I wouldn’t touch you like that.’

  David wakes up and laughs. ‘Everyone has urges,’ he says. ‘I hear you at night with Mamma. I see the boys looking at Susan. Everybody touches me. Why not you?’

  Matthew is his mother’s little mud man. This is what she called him when he was very small, growing to be tall in the hills of Port Antonio in Jamaica.

  Matthew goes for a walk by the river, and the fish cry. He watches the tourist men with the tourist women, slow-ripple waves filling his shallow eyes. He buys something in a shop and goes home to his family late at night. David is not there.

  He wakes his wife softly and then lies on top of her, so that she cannot spark and burn him. The knife that he has bought is a sharp one and it slices through flesh easily. Matthew trims the hair between her legs first, and then cuts deeply and neatly, singing into Leila’s cool ear. Matthew visits his daughter and does his work as fast as he can. He props Susan at the head of her bed and smiles at a job well done. He covers the bloody hole between her legs, and lays her down. She looks like she’s dreaming.

  Matthew slices onions and sweet peppers and seasons meat. He sets the table for one. He sits down and sharpens his knife. He can see his son in his mind, the men who touched him for so many years, and the men who still do. He tests the knife against his groin and readies himself for the pain. David can come home for dinner now. The home is pure. There will be nothing here to scare David, now. Nothing at all.

  AND YOU KNOW THIS

  For Marjorie Ross

  Amber craned her neck, trying to see over the thick stream of passengers coming in at Terminal 3. There was still no sign of Birdie. She wondered if her friend was negotiating a hover frame after all. She was twenty minutes late, and who was late anymore?

  When they’d spoken online two days ago, she’d found it difficult to conceal her shock at Birdie’s tired eyes and thin face. Surely it wasn’t that long since they’d connected, no more than a fortnight, both busy arranging things for the trip. But when she counted it was actually three weeks. Nearly four. Still, she hadn’t expected Birdie to look so poorly. They’d both had their injections. Perhaps hers hadn’t quite kicked in, yet.

  ‘Is so me look bad?’ Birdie had laughed at her expression.

  ‘No, no, B,’ Amber said, ‘yuh look fine, girl.’

  Birdie laughed again. ‘After all these years yuh goin’ start lie to me now?’ Then she’d coughed for several minutes without pause, despite a glass of water, holding her chest and holding her side. That was when Amber had suggested the hover frame. After all, why did they pay their taxes if not for these little luxuries? All Birdie had to do was step out of the plane and be spirited to the airport lounge. A matter of seconds. But Birdie was as dismissive as she’d expected.

  ‘Hover frame yuh rass! Is not me one ah mash up! After yuh have arthritis ah kill yuh off! Me can still dance yuh under the table – and yuh know this!’

  Amber let herself laugh back. Whenever anyone spoke of Birdie they eventually winked and chorused: ‘And yuh know this!’ It was her stock phrase, stolen from some film in the 90s. Amber never could remember its name.

  ‘Call for Sister Amber Bailey.’ The cheery mechanical voice echoed through Arrivals. ‘Sister Bailey, puh-leeze access Channel Number One Zero Three.’

  She limped over to the Com Terminal. Birdie was right – she was a far cry from the dancer
she had been. But just being out of a wheelchair was amazing. The lady who gave her the injection had embraced her when she took her first step. A kind woman, wearing eyeshadow far too blue for her complexion. The kind of young lady who threatened to ruin your coat collar with her concealer choices.

  Amber flexed the fingers on her right hand – they still hurt like a macca bush, but she hoped that would pass soon – and slowly tapped in her code and gave her keyword to the operator. A recording reminded her that she was in Airport Jamaica 237 and wished her a spiritually productive day. On screen, silent waves stroked a peaceful shore. Amber rolled her eyes. They’d made it to 2070 and Com Terminal messages were still like those old telephone recordings: cheesy and insincere.

  ‘‘Ey, gyal! Yuh deh-deh?’ Birdie’s face flickered on to the screen.

  ‘Me here, man. Didn’t I say I was coming?’

  Birdie winked. ‘Not like yuh have a choice!’

  Amber kept the smile plastered to her face. ‘So what taking so long? Man all over Jamaica waitin’ for us!’

  ‘Me comin’, me comin’. Me jus’ want to tell yuh de Medic goin’ haffi give me another shot.’

  That wasn’t good.

  ‘Two? Me barely did need di one. Yuh sure yuh don’t need the hover frame?’

  Birdie sucked her teeth. ‘Me tell yuh a’ready – me come fi dance inna de sunshine. Jus’ mek sure yuh have rum.’

  The Com Terminal flickered into a peaceful blue. So much time and money had been wasted on the Big Blue Talks. Airport officials conferring with the wisest men and women in the world over their damn-fool Com Terminal screens. What low-octave frequency best to soothe tired travellers. And God, the months discussing the colour. Jamaicans were so damn high-chested. Still, in her day – she and Birdie’s day she reminded herself – the government would have been too busy sending gunmen into local garrisons and thieving people money to spend time on the perfect shade of blue. Times had changed and she had to admit the screens did what they were supposed to do: she felt calmer, even after these few minutes, in front of one.