by Olive Senior
I screamed louder then, a proper scream this time, and tried to free myself, knocking the chair over. My feet got entangled and I fell. He was instantly on top of me. I was murderously angry, and eyed the scissors on the machine above me, for I wanted to plunge them into him. When I realized that I couldn’t reach them, I screamed again, and he put his hand over my mouth. I tasted the blood as I bit my own lip. I could feel his anger as I fought against him. It was strange to think afterwards that he never said anything, he just grunted as he struggled to control me. But each time he took his hand from my mouth I screamed again. So then he slammed my head against the floor and put his hand against my neck to pin me there. From the look in his eyes I truly thought he was going to kill me.
He was breathing heavily and moaning. He removed his hand from my neck and placed it on the floor to balance himself, while trying to unbutton his trousers with the other. I closed my eyes then, trying to think my way through this, praying to a God I only called upon in times of crisis. It was then that I heard someone slamming the kitchen door and Mass Ephraim calling out, “Miss G, Miss G, you aright?”
I found the courage to open my mouth and scream again. He got up quickly, my assailant, straightening his clothes just as Mass Ephraim came running into the room, cutlass raised, his normally placid face distorted with rage. I pulled myself up and buttoned my blouse, my hands trembling, feeling ashamed as I did so, wondering if Mass Ephraim would think I had invited this on myself. But there was no doubt what he thought, for he swung at John, who was on his feet now and who laughed as he easily shifted out of range and parried the blows until he got into position to grab the old man’s hand on an upswing and twist it until he winced with pain and dropped the weapon.
By this time they had both backed into the kitchen. I got up and followed them in time to see John toss the old man against the wall like a sack of cornmeal. I don’t know that I have ever hated anyone in my life as much as I hated that man then. I never spoke to him again, though he had the nerve to attend my wedding with his wife and children, looking scrubbed and neat and so respectable.
She was a poor white girl from German town, with lank pale blonde hair and a manner to match. But she had three of the most beautiful children I have ever seen, and Ma D praised her as a wonderful mother. I always wondered what she made of the scratches on her husband’s face that day, but that perhaps was a normal occurrence.
When Ma D got home and heard what had happened from Ephraim before she even came inside the house, she didn’t write this time, she went in person to see Miss Celia. I don’t know what she told her, but she returned in triumph with her written permission for me to marry. The day she went, Gem never left my side, but we needn’t have worried. Sam had given John a thorough beating, we heard, with a few blows thrown in by the other brothers, and it was some time before he started showing his face around the Bull Pen again. At the time, Sam’s actions made me feel so proud, a sign that I mattered to him. Only later, of course, would I realize that John had not been chastised because of the injury he had done me, but for his disrespect of another man’s property.
47
PROPERTY! NOW I CAN laugh about it, but at the time the realization just added to my bitterness. Not long after he left me for good, Sam and his brothers sold the family property to a bauxite mining company, for an enormous sum, I am told, shared between the four of them. By this time both Ma D and their sister, Jean, had died. That bare-boned soil was found to be full of aluminium, and he was rich. I was still scratching around in the dirt, with two children at home. Never once did he offer us anything. At least not to me, but it was strange that as the children grew up and left home it was to him that they gravitated, or so I heard, for they lost no time in cutting me off.
No wonder he looked so smug and prosperous when he came to Celia’s wedding. Paid for it too, I was to learn. I can still remember how I shrivelled up inside myself when I saw him. Here I was, Mother of the Bride dressed all in blue, for she had chosen my outfit down to my dyed satin shoes. I was glad my hat had a little brim I could hide under, hide my plain face, sunburned black, and my silk gloves would hide my work hands that one quick manicure couldn’t disguise. Hands that spent the entire ceremony clutching and unclutching the beaded silk purse in my lap. When I stood up, the beads that I had worked loose fell to the ground, and I was trailed thereafter by a dribble of tiny pink and blue beads that got crushed underfoot. By the end of the day, the purse itself was as bare as my soul.
Celia hadn’t told me he was coming. To give her away. As if we hadn’t both done that a long time ago. Up to that moment in the church I had sat there feeling proud of her, though she was not at all famous then. I was proud of the good match she seemed to be making. Her husband, Herman, came from a well-to-do family of legal luminaries. He was an up-and-coming lawyer himself. The few times I had seen them together, I was touched by how he seemed to care for her.
It wasn’t a large wedding, but as the church filled up with fashionable people, the groom’s family, their friends, the more dowdy and awkward I felt, sitting there beside my son, Junior, who was assigned to escort me but who maintained such a space between us on the pew I knew he had no desire to be there with me. Though he was pleasant enough when he came to collect me, I have to say, bending down to kiss me on my cheek, smiling and telling me how well I looked. I didn’t say much to him in the car, for there were other guests present, but the lingering smell of his aftershave made my heart ache. I remembered how even as a small boy he would help himself to his father’s, mimicking him in all his masculine ways.
I looked out the corner of my eye at him, for I was too self-conscious to turn my head and look at my own son whom I hadn’t seen for some years, now fully grown. Over six feet tall and handsome, looking like none of us really, more Indian than anything with his beautiful chocolate skin and curly black hair and, unlike the others, my brown eyes.
The last time I’d seen him was when he came home to collect his things after he’d been expelled from school. My prediction then, loudly flung at him as he left, was that he’d come to a bad end. But here he was at twenty looking quite prosperous, if the beautifully cut silk suit, the expensive watch, and the way he carried himself were saying anything. Of course it might have been his father’s doing, but I had heard that Junior had gone into business with his old schoolmates, Michael Evans or whatever his name was and that Pinto boy—with the help of their rich fathers, no doubt—and they were doing well. Exactly what the business was I didn’t know, and I didn’t get the chance to ask Junior that day.
His father was the focus of all my agitation and anger and resentment. When the wedding march started and I looked down the aisle and I saw Celia on his arm, my stomach turned somersaults and I blanked out the rest of the ceremony, consumed by the unfairness of it all.
48
JUNIOR WASN’T THE ONLY one of my children in the church that day. I’d forgotten Lise was there too. To that Lise would have said in her sharp little voice, “So, what else is new?” She claimed she always came last with me. That could well be true. She was an impossible child from birth. From the time she was implanted in my womb, sorrow, anger, bereavement, and regret were stalking me. I knew it was all over between me and Sam, that nothing had gone right and nothing would ever be fixed between us. Another child I didn’t want, I have to admit that. And it was while I was pregnant that we allowed those people to take Celia. Would I have allowed Sam to persuade me it was the best thing for her if I myself wasn’t in what people used to call a “delicate way”? Did I allow my heightened emotional state at the time to cloud my judgment?
On top of it all, Ma D, who had been ill with cancer, died. I had gone to stay with her from time to time, though it was hard for me to leave my home. She had her other daughters-in-law to take care of her, for all her sons were married by then and living nearby. Then one day they took her to the hospital for treatment that didn’t work. I never saw her again. Losing Ma D was like losing a part
of myself, for though after I married and moved away we didn’t see each other that often, just knowing she was there was good enough for me. I went to her funeral and wore black and bawled like a baby, not caring what anyone thought—in those days pregnant women were not supposed to go to funerals or wear black or bawl their heads off. But this was one time I got my own way with Sam. He didn’t want me to go, but I simply got dressed and seated myself in the car and refused to get out until he finally gave up and drove.
I suppose I was in mourning for a lot of things by the time Lise came, not least for the death of something I couldn’t even name, for some spark that I thought would come and live inside me the day I rode off with Sam, that would keep the darkness at bay. It’s not that I turned away from the baby. At least I don’t think so. She was breast-fed like the others. But they say babies can sense things even in the womb. She must have felt chilly winds blowing. I suppose I should accept some blame for the way Lise turned out. Loud and demanding, selfish and mean-spirited. I know it’s bad to say such things about one’s child, but really, she had none of the sweetness or charm of the others. Which is probably why she felt she had to grab all the attention. She wasn’t an attractive child, definitely shortchanged as far as looks were concerned, though by the time she was in her early teens she certainly had learnt to make the most of what she had. Don’t ask me where she got it, that thing called sexiness, but you should have seen her at the wedding—sixteen looking twenty-five, with her overripe breasts falling out of her frock, and behaving like forty, drinking champagne and carrying on with all the men. I have to say she did look fantastic as Celia’s bridesmaid. I know Celia wanted Shirley as her maid of honour, but Shirley had gone to New York by then and didn’t come for the wedding. I’m not sure I ever knew the reason why, except that Celia was terribly upset about it. Young as Lise was, she carried it off. I had to admire her.
At the reception, she barely deigned to notice me. She was hooked up under her father’s arm the whole time, which is probably where she felt she belonged. I spent my time avoiding them. As far as I was concerned she was her father’s responsibility. So why did I feel shame every time news of one of Lise’s scandalous affairs reached me?
49
IT’S WHEN I LOOK at people like Miss Pitt-Grainger and one or two of the other folk at Ellesmere Lodge who never seem to have visitors, who clearly have no one, that I have come to appreciate how much Celia has done for me. I wonder why, for apart from life, what have I really given her? She’s given me so much. For one thing, she gave me status among my neighbours once she started to get her name and picture in the papers. You wouldn’t believe how important people considered this. Well, I was proud of her too, of course, every step of the way, but I certainly wouldn’t have gone around the place boasting about her the way everyone else did. As for when she started to host one of those television talk shows. Well, you’d have thought she was the Queen and I the Queen Mother.
Of course, by this time people in the district had begun to benefit from having children abroad or themselves going overseas as farm workers; foreign travel was now the norm rather than the exception. Many homes boasted large TV sets and a few had satellite dishes on the roofs. Quite a difference from when I was a child and we seemed so cut off from the rest of the world. I was still cut off in a way, for apart from my radio all I had was an old black and white TV. Until Junior turned up at my house one day with this big colour one. Of course it didn’t mean very much, as I didn’t have a satellite dish, so it was still just the local station I could watch. But that’s what she was on, this talk show. So at least I could watch her. Mark you, Junior did say he would see about getting me a dish, but I absolutely refused it, I thought the whole thing was too ostentatious and far too much money to spend, though I was pleased that he was being so thoughtful.
It was after Celia’s wedding that Junior got into the habit of dropping by. He never stayed long, but I was happy to see him. He stayed long enough to eat, as he missed my cooking, or so he said, and I usually rushed to the kitchen to rustle up something. Junior always loved his food and now I could see it showing. I teased him, for he was certainly filling out. I kept asking him about Shirley. I had had no reply to any of the letters I wrote to her in New York and I was getting seriously worried. Junior assured me she was all right, they often spoke on the phone and she always asked for me, she was just too busy; studying and working at the same time. I believed him, but I still fretted over Shirley, wondering why she never answered any of my letters.
I was always glad when any of the children came by—though, if truth be told, Lise and I couldn’t be together for five minutes before we fell out. Or at least, she argued and shouted and I said little, but she knew how to read my body language and my silence itself enraged her. After my first few words and her reaction I would just give up in disgust and let her rant. Almost every visit ended with her slamming the door and leaving in a huff. And then I would heave a sigh and say, “Good riddance.” But really, it would take me hours and sometimes days to get over the disturbance she left in her wake. What did we argue about? Maybe the same things all mothers argue with their teenage girls about. The way she dressed and carried herself, her behaviour, her school work, boys, her lack of consideration. Her lying. I caught her out so many times. Maybe we would have resolved our differences in time. I was not to find out because, as it was with Junior, she didn’t have to stay around and take it from me. She had her father to run to.
As the youngest, I suppose she was always Daddy’s girl. She was the only one who asked after her father when he left us for good.
She just came right out and asked, “Where’s Papa?”
We were all sitting at the table having dinner, stew peas and rice. To this day I remember that moment and the turmoil I felt. Her question forced me to face up to something I wanted to pretend wasn’t happening. Although he had been gone over a week, I hadn’t prepared an answer to that question, not even for myself. I never answered her; I was too afraid of bursting into tears. But I could feel the silence around the table getting longer and longer, as if all of us were collectively holding our breath. I gave Lise a look that normally would silence her. It did, but it didn’t stop her playing with the empty spoon in her wide open mouth and gazing at me with what I called her mongoose look. The one the mongoose gave to the boa constrictor to stop it in its tracks. Even then, at eight or nine, Lise was already tough. My God! She had her father’s face and eyes and red colouring, but not his good looks, and at this moment with her coarse little plaits unravelling and her face covered in freckles she was an awkward, plain-looking child, her eyelashes stubby and almost white, her eyes pale and disconcerting. Her looks brought her plenty of teasing. “Mongoose,” the children called her, “Muss-Muss.” “Quaw.” “Redibo.” If they did this in my hearing, I would tell them to stop; but I didn’t worry about it, for I really didn’t see it as anything more than what children did to each other. So I guess Lise learnt at an early age to fight her own fights.
At first the teasing would make her cry, but then she got more and more aggressive: throwing sticks, stones, whatever there was to hand, fearlessly launching her skinny self at children much bigger, trying to scratch their eyes out. She was fierce. Where she got this from, God only knows. To me she was just the bad seed. And didn’t she prove it? But that was still to come.
At the table that day her question went unanswered, and not another word was uttered for the rest of the meal, not even by talkative Shirley. I could feel the tension, though, growing and growing from the day I sent off their father’s clothes. Maybe I was the one generating it, for I felt brittle and stretched. So now the question hung in the air, tantalizing, unsettling, as mysteries are. We sat there, trying to eat, but overly conscious of each other, of every movement, the slightest little sound. For once, I couldn’t wait for them to leave the table. They couldn’t wait either, and as soon as I said they could go they jumped up and cleared the table with great eagerness whil
e I just sat for a long long time till darkness fell. For once I didn’t check on them or the house. I got up and flung myself down on my bed and fell fast asleep.
But Lise refused to let it go. For more than once after that she asked, without getting any answer from me, “When’s Papa coming back?” And whenever she got into a real temper, which she did more and more, lying on the floor kicking and screaming, scratching her own face and tearing out her hair in clumps, inevitably the tantrum would end up with her falling quiet, gulping in air along with huge sobs, and muttering “Papa, Papa,” half swallowing the words until she fell silent. After a while I paid her no mind; I just left her to sleep it off wherever she had thrown herself. I had decided that I would not allow this child to rule me. I had too many other things to worry about.
But don’t think I didn’t notice the two older ones those times, how they exchanged looks between them, secret guilty looks as if they were in some grand conspiracy. They always were, weren’t they, Shirley and Junior. They must have let Lise in on the mystery, however they saw it, for after a while she stopped mentioning her father. To me, that was all to the good.
50
EIGHT YEARS LATER AND Lise was living with him, in his nice posh house on the outskirts of town, where the rich people lived, with his new woman. Lise left home as soon as she finished her exams. She didn’t wait on the results, probably because she knew she had done so badly. She stayed in the town to get a job for the summer, she said, sharing with Shirley, who by then had a little apartment of her own on the side of someone’s house. Lise used to come home for weekends quite often, for I insisted, and then it got less and less. She was such a liar that it was some time before I knew that she was no longer living with Shirley but had moved in with her father. It wasn’t “a big ting” as she put it, she had her own room and she wasn’t paying rent, and though it was a bit out of town Dad—as he had become—drove her to and from work for she had no intention of going back to school.