Dancing Lessons

by Olive Senior

  Well, he did take care of us, I’ll give him that, as far as he was able, though it got to be less and less as he needed more and more for his drink and his women. He put a roof over our heads and food on the table, when he could, and sometimes money for clothes and the children’s schoolbooks. When Lise, the last child, was eight or nine he left home as usual one day, and he never came back. Sent me nothing but a note asking me to deliver his clothes to the messenger, and I’m proud to say I didn’t rip them to shreds as I wanted to. I behaved in a civilized way. I packed them neatly in his bags and I handed them over, even offered the man something to eat while he waited. And I just carried on. For I was the one who had kept the little farm going all along, the four acres of family land he was given when we married, and I was only glad he didn’t want to bring the other woman there and throw us off it, for by now I believed him capable of that. No love of farming in him, I could see that from the start, so it was fortunate that I took to it, with help only with the hard work, the digging and hoeing and weeding. A boy to cut the bananas when they were ready and climb the coconut trees or dig the yams.

  He did try at first to help in a half-hearted way, but after the third child—Charles Junior—was born, and we were still so desperately poor, he got the job as a bookkeeper down at the sugar estate, keeping track of the men’s work and paying them, maintaining the records. He was good at that sort of thing. Suddenly having a regular income coming in made a big difference. He was able to extend the house, he bought the car, and for a while we were much better off than we had ever been. For the first time since we got married I could see a path opening before us.

  Sam had a good head on his shoulders and some education. He and his brothers had all been sent to a fine boys’ school—the same one that took Charles Junior—though how long they lasted there I have no idea. I can’t say he was at heart a wicked man, but he was a weak, vacillating one, hollow at the core, and I think that made him cruel. I think all of them had been injured too much by their father to really make a go of anything. But he did stick to this work, probably because it was so undemanding, and it gave him an excuse to be away from home.

  When he failed to come home that last time I knew where he went, don’t think I didn’t have my channel to everything that was happening. Millie who came to help out when I had the first child for some reason remained true to me all her life, and as she ironed or cleaned the floor, she kept me informed. She came from a family of hard-working women with their tentacles spread wide—one sister worked at the post office, two others worked for the best families in the district, and her mother was a higgler who went to the city market every week. Of course I had no way of knowing how much of what occurred in my own household made the rounds. But somehow, if I came close to trusting anyone it would be Millie, for she has known me better and longer than anyone else, and when I came to Ellesmere Lodge it was in her care that I left my house and land. Perhaps I trust Millie because she was the only person who seemed to prefer me to my husband. I could see it in the way she acted whenever he was around, and she was ever so sympathetic to me, always, though I wasn’t sure how much of it was simply out of opposition to her twin sister, Kay. Don’t ask me why, but those two girls had to disagree on everything, they were like night and day, and since Kay was a big fan of Sam’s, I think Millie was duty bound to despise him and champion me. So she kept track of his business, and could announce with glee one day that his new woman had thrown him out.

  It wasn’t even Millie’s day to work for me. By then I could only afford to employ her for two days. But she dropped by anyway, so urgent did she consider the news. When Millie went to work she went barefoot and dressed in a blue cambric shift with her hair in little plaits covered by a cap, and she assumed a manner to match. On her days off, when she had a tendency to wander around the district, Millie was a sight, for even in the middle of the week she could be seen dressed up in red boots that laced in front and a tight hobble skirt that showed off her bottom and a frilly blouse that showed off her breasts. Hair upswept, smelling sweet with the coconut oil she applied to her skin so it shone and the khus khus perfume she dabbed behind her ears, she walked with careful, rolling steps that showed off her finer points. In later years of course it would be hot pants, Jheri curls, and Afro-glow, and later still a track suit, trainers, and a blonde wig, for Millie kept up-to-date.

  Millie was a sambo girl, rather plump with squashed features, so she wasn’t really pretty, but she had something that was sweet to men for they were attracted to her like honeybees. Unlike the other girls around who couldn’t wait to get a man, and usually got a baby instead, Millie said she wasn’t ready to settle down and flirted and laughed with them all, showing the gap between her front teeth that was supposed to be the sign of a loose woman. But I don’t think she was; though she had a reputation as a “walk-bout,” Millie didn’t care. Unlike her younger sister Vie, who had to stay home to mind the three children she already had at age twenty, Millie was “free, single, and disengaged,” as she liked to describe herself to any who dared to criticize her.

  “Why me should stay coop up a yard like cunno-munno and me nuh have man or pikni to mind?” was her standard question, hands on hips. She was proud of her independence and, indeed, was the only one of those girls who would eventually settle for nothing less than marriage. Since she and her other sisters all worked out of the house, they left poor Vie not just to mind pikni but do the cooking and the chores for the rest of them. So Millie on her days off was free to walk. And talk. She walked to the shop, she walked to the post office, she walked miles to visit her friends and relatives when her mind took her, in the process harnessing all news and gossip and trailing behind her the ugly chat-chat that followed women who did not stay at their yard and—even worse—had no children of their own. Yet, because Millie had such a pleasant, smiling face, with dimples, and a temper to match, everyone liked her, even the women, so the remarks passed behind her back were nowhere as stinging as they would have been were she less well liked, or less well connected in the marketplace of gossip.

  That afternoon, on her way home from her walkabout, she stopped off to visit me.

  I was actually seated on the back steps beating chaklata in the mortar when she came around the side of the house. “Miss G,” she greeted me, and I could see from the dampness of her clothes and the sweat running down her face that she was coming from far. She stopped by the tank to take up the little tin cup that stood there, dipped up water from the bucket, and drank in deep gulps before she came and seated herself on the bench under the breadfruit tree that faced the steps. Before saying another word, she pulled her cotton hankie from her sleeve to wipe her face and stooped and picked up a dried breadfruit leaf from the ground to fan herself. I continued with my work, scooping up the last of the beaten chocolate and cinnamon from the mortar and shaping it before putting it aside on the tin sheet to dry with the rest of what I had already pounded and formed into balls. Then I started to take up more of the parched beans from the Dutch pot and drop them into the mortar. But I didn’t raise the mortar stick, for though I had a million things to do before the children came home from school, I was eager to hear the latest news and welcomed the break.

  I settled back, for I expected this session to be the usual leisurely affair, but Millie hadn’t even finished wiping her face before she burst out laughing. “Then Miss G, you nuh hear? One autoclaps at Cross Path Friday night!”

  I must have looked blank, for the name meant nothing to me. Then I remembered it was where Sam had gone to live when he left me, a little township down on the plains, near to the estate where he worked. At the mention of Sam I felt a tightness around my heart, but I looked at Millie and said nothing.

  “She throw him out, for it was her house you know? Lock, stock, and barrel. All him tings she tumble out inna yard. Is so him come home and find them.”

  Her eyes were filled with laughter as she looked at me, but I was busy trying to envision the scene, one
that I had wanted to enact myself but lacked the courage to do.

  “Him get out of him car and him see the whole house lock up. Him don’t say a word, him try the front door with him key. Well, hear this now!” Millie was virtually crowing. “She nuh get the lock change?”

  She was laughing now till tears came to her eyes and she had to wipe them with her kerchief. I didn’t feel like laughing, I don’t know why. Millie didn’t notice, she was used to my silent ways.

  “Well, him start to batter the door and bawl out for her. For him walk right round the house but every door and window lock. So him come back round to the front door and start to kick it in.

  “By this time, crowd gather you know. Nayga standing there on the street a watch the play. So she must be inside waiting till she have a big audience, for before the door yield, she throw open a window at the side and start off one big bawling. ‘Murder! Police! Wai-O him gwine kill me. Unno run for the constable for me. Do!’”

  Well, Millie said, nobody moved since everybody knew this was part of the sport. But Sam, who I know was always embarrassed by scenes, spoilt their entertainment. For he stopped kicking at the door, looked out at his audience and smiled broadly, shrugged his shoulders, picked up his things, threw them into the car, and drove off to cheers and waves.

  At the time I heard this story I’m ashamed to say I never crowed as I should have done; the only thing I took away was that he was free of that woman, free to come back to me. Already I was mentally planning how I would greet him, how I would not utter a word of reproach, how I would cook his favourite dishes, press his shirts the way he liked, cater to him in every way so he would never again leave me. How pathetic can one get? For the next minute my ears tuned into Millie again in time to hear that the quarrel was over another woman he was seeing. Now his car was parked over at her yard. I was so ashamed of my feelings I felt soiled, for I had truly thought when he left that I was done with him. But Sam was the kind who infiltrated, like birdshot pellets that could stay in your body forever, a foreign agent colonizing you. Causing you just enough pain to bring on a perpetually nagging awareness; too near to the heart to cauterize from consciousness.

  What on earth did Sam have that made us women ready to be such willing slaves? I don’t know, for after that initial contact I never did personally experience much outpouring of his charm. But I saw it work on other people. The way he had of making you feel as if you were the most important person in the world to him, for just that moment he had you in view. For just as long as it took him to extract what he wanted.

  In the middle of Millie’s recital and my own emotional merry-go-round, a dreadful thought came to me. Millie! Why hadn’t she fallen to his charms the same as everyone? Weren’t they two firesticks who had known each other much longer than he knew me? Why hadn’t sparks flown between them? Hadn’t they been thrown into close proximity over and over again in our house? Why wouldn’t he exercise his master’s prerogative as they all seemed to do?

  Was Millie wilful and independent enough to resist him? Why hadn’t he taken her as he seemed to have done many of the girls around? Or was it perhaps that he hadn’t? Is that why Millie was so scornful of him? Her attitude wasn’t natural, was it? I could feel the panic rising inside me until I trembled and I shook my head to force the thoughts down, for I knew I was treading on dangerous ground. Not Millie. I didn’t want to lose her, too. She was the only one I had to put steel into my resolve whenever I needed it. I forced myself back to that place where I trusted her. Trusted her, at the very least, not to be a hypocrite. Like so many others I could name.

  Millie came and went with news of Sam from time to time, but eventually he moved away and I lost track of him. By this time his mother—my dear Ma D—was dead and I had no contact with the rest of the family. I struggled on alone with the children, once more mired in work and making ends meet. Was I bitter? Did I resent Sam? You bet. Especially after I found out that behind my back, all this time he was in touch with the children, bent on seducing them away from me.

  When She got married he showed up at the wedding. More, he had a leading role. It was such a blow to me, on what should have been a happy occasion, to see him looking a bit battered but still cocky and full of life, dressed in a fine silk suit, his hair white but freshly cut, as if he had just stepped out of a fancy barbershop. I thought it was just like her, wasn’t it, to take away from me every drop of joy there was that day, bringing him back on the scene like that. I thought he had totally vanished from my life as my father had done. I thought that was how it was with me and men.

  18

  WELL, MY SON WANDERED off too, didn’t he? Even before he was old enough to consider himself a man. Charles Junior. After that I made sure he became his father’s responsibility. To tell the truth now, I wasn’t too bothered by his going—I was actually relieved, for the boy by then, at sixteen, was more than I could manage. How a good boy could suddenly turn so bad, I don’t know. Up to his third year in boarding school, Junior was the sweetest; he was easygoing, polite, willing to do what you asked, did well at school. Much easier to raise than the girls, I would say.

  I don’t know if his father going off like that had anything to do with it. Junior was about thirteen at the time. I never said a word to those children about Sam. Even after I sent off his clothes I didn’t tell them he wasn’t coming back. I didn’t want to talk about it, seeing everything I had invested in life bouncing and scattering like dried pimento grains falling from a badly sewn crocus bag. I suppose the children noticed his clothes were no longer in our room, his shaving stuff had disappeared from the bathroom, come Monday his clothes were not among the washing on the line. But they said nothing, not even Miss Big-mouth Shirley. It was as if the man of the house had fallen into space, leaving this silence behind that wasn’t a silence really, more like a painful ringing in the ear. I didn’t realize how his absence dragged us all down. How mistaken I was to think I was the only one who suffered because I was the one who had been shamed. Say what you will, the children loved their father. When he was around, he was good with them. He was affectionate and playful and indulgent the way I never was. But there, he left, and the only one in the house who mentioned his name was the little one, Lise. About a week after he left she came right out and asked, “Where’s Papa?” Nobody answered.

  He and I did exchange letters about the children’s schooling. Junior had done well in his first few years and I didn’t want to have to take him out of school, so I swallowed my pride and asked his father to continue paying the fees. He did too, though it was still a struggle finding money for everything else he needed as a boarder. But I truly wanted my children to have the best, and as I saw it, only education would give it to them since I had no legacy.

  If only Junior had kept at his lessons, who knows what he might have turned out to be. He was bright, make no mistake. Even in that school with boys coming from these rich homes, he did well, never coming less than third in his class. He got prizes too, for good conduct, athletics, maths, and others I can’t remember. I was so proud of him, though I’m not sure how I showed it. I think now I was more concerned with the fact that he hadn’t come first. Well, I thought that was the way to urge him on to do better. What did I know?

  Then sometime around third or fourth form something happened that turned him into this monster. That’s the only way to describe it, the change that suddenly came over that boy. Like he spun around and turned himself wrong side out.

  My first thought was to blame it on the friends he was making, but these were boys from good homes, not the types you would expect to lead him astray. It’s only when I look back that I realize the bad egg was that Pinto boy, nice, good-looking, his mother was a businesswoman and his father a lawyer who had turned into this big-time politician. The other best friend was Michael, the son of a doctor. Good homes, all of them. And where did Pinto end up? In a federal prison in the U.S. as a drug trafficker. And the other one? That Michael? Shot to death in his own
home, gangland style, his blood draining into the pool, his wife and daughter watching. Junior is lucky to be alive, I suppose, though I’m not sure how long his connection with them lasted. For that’s where the rot started, the summer he begged off coming home because Pinto had invited him to their beach house. How proud I was that my son was making such important connections. How happy I was that I was finally getting him away from the poor barefoot boys of the district he used to hang out with.

  You know what it’s like raising a boy child who listens to nothing you have to say? It’s a father’s job to raise a boy child, but by the time Junior was a teenager, his father was no longer around. And there I was, stuck with him, another Samphire man. Tall, good-looking, charming when he wanted to be. After that summer, his mood, his personality, his behaviour, everything changed and I no longer knew who he was. As soon as he got back to school I started getting letters from the principal. I wrote to his father then and asked him to deal with it. I guess he did do something, but it was too late. When the school expelled him, it was his father who took him home. I didn’t want to see him. He did come to get his things and then I didn’t see him again for several years, until we patched things up at his sister’s wedding.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have given up on Junior, if that’s what I did. It’s not that easy. Knowing just what combination of flavours goes into creating people. He certainly got his stubbornness from me. His silence too, for once he turned into a teenager I never knew what was in his mind. That was the crazy part, not knowing how he felt about anything. I’ve spent years thinking about what Junior turned into. Well, I don’t really know what that is, do I? I don’t know anything about my children once they left home, Junior or Shirley or Lise. Except for Her, the one that escaped, the one who was raised by other people. So what is that saying about me then?