Dancing Lessons

by Olive Senior

  I raised my eyes and met Herman’s. He gave a small smile and said, “G, you might as well hear the whole truth. Shirley was killed, but it was no accident: she was a small-time dealer and seemed to have crossed her supplier so he had her taken out. At least that’s the official version of events. She—well, this is the awful part. Her body was found in a Dumpster on the other side of the city with no clothes, no identification on her, so it was some time—months—before they found out who she was.”

  Ashley gave a little gasp, as I did.

  “Even when the police identified her we still wouldn’t have known who she was,” Celia continued. “It turned out, she was married to Pinto. Not a word to any of us. And that wasn’t even his real name. Well, it was his mother’s name and he used it, as the Spanish do, but her name was given as Shirley Aguilar. It was probably carried in the papers here, no doubt in the Star. But even if we saw it, we wouldn’t have known it was our Shirley.”

  I could see Ashley screwing up her mouth as if she wanted to say something, and I fully expected “Awesome!” to come out. But it was Herman who spoke.

  “Shirley wasn’t a bad kid, but her life went off the rails.”

  I was tensing myself to hear the rest of it, but just then there was a loud halloing at the front door and the grim atmosphere dissolved. Ashley’s friends had arrived. Celia dabbed at her eyes and immediately turned into her smiling, gracious self as she greeted the youngsters and introduced them to me. Herman looked at his watch and said he had promised to drop by his parents. “We’ll talk later,” he said, looking over at me. I nodded, feeling that we had made a breakthrough. Somehow I knew this time I would hear the truth. Celia and the youngsters trooped out, and I was left alone. I sat and then I got up from the table and was surprised at how weak and confused I felt. I tottered out into the garden and sat on a bench that overlooked the city and the sea and I took deep breaths and allowed the beauty of the morning to pull me away from the darkness of Shirley’s last days. I forced myself not to think of that.

  I was truthful when I said I didn’t know about Shirley’s drug use or her relationship with Pinto, but somehow I wasn’t all that surprised at what I had just learned. Did I already know it, at least subconsciously? Had I heard rumours? Was it a mother’s intuition? Or was it that I already knew the narrative so well? So many other children had fallen victims to violence in the years since then, to drugs and guns, perhaps we had simply lost the capacity to feel anything but helplessness.

  I couldn’t help myself from asking, why? What had turned Shirley so weak and foolish in the first place? What signals had I missed? What signals had I failed to give? Was it the way she was raised or some internal flaw she was born with that had widened over the years? I didn’t have the photo with me, but I didn’t need to look at it now to understand the depth of the sadness in her eyes.

  108

  WE CONTINUED TO TALK about Shirley on and off over the weekend, not in any formal kind of way, but just whenever one of us felt like saying something. Sometimes it was all three of us, or just me and Celia or me and Herman. I noticed that when Ashley wasn’t out with her friends, she was hanging around us all the time, as if she didn’t want to be left out of anything; but, unlike her usual chatty self, she was mostly silent. I couldn’t help thinking how differently she was raised, as if she had a right to share in whatever was happening and not be banished from adult conversation the way I had been and the way I treated my own children. Staying in Celia’s house that weekend opened my eyes to a lot of things, to what I suppose was a normal family life. Well no, not normal, for I had banished that word from my vocabulary. Ideal, perhaps? I certainly think Celia had found the ideal in Herman; I could see he allowed her to be herself, to be free; and, with a twinge of envy, I wondered what path had led her to find her soulmate.

  The most important thing I learned was that Junior had had nothing to do with Shirley’s death. It was pure coincidence that his own troubles started around the same time and he went underground to save his skin. But he did feel guilt that he was the one who had introduced Shirley to Pinto, Celia said.

  “Though at the time he and Michael and Pinto were just good mates from school. They had no idea at the time what a madman Pinto was.”

  We were talking in the kitchen, because I’d insisted on cooking dinner. Celia and Herman had looked relieved at that suggestion and both had vanished to their bedroom for the afternoon. It was Ashley who showed me where to find everything and how to work the fancy stove and oven. The latter was vital, for I let her into my little secret: I had decided to make devil’s food cake with caramel icing for dessert!

  “Mm,” Ashley said, “my favourite. Mum’s too. She always makes it for my birthday, but she ends up scarfing down most of it herself.”

  “Oh really,” I said. “But don’t say anything, I want it to be a big surprise.”

  Most of the dinner was prepared and the cake was in the oven when Celia appeared, looking rested, smelling fresh with shampoo and body lotion, wearing a long wrap skirt and a tight knit top that made her look like she stepped out of Vogue. And though I could see how toned her body was, I still couldn’t help noticing her bones. She immediately started sniffing, “Mmm, am I smelling what I am smelling?” But I pretended innocence. “Just a little something I’m whipping up for dessert,” I said airily, praying to high heaven that the devil wouldn’t make my chocolate cake in any way inferior to Mrs. Reverend Doctor’s.

  I didn’t want Celia to focus on the cake, so I busied myself at the sink with washing the lettuce and spinning it.

  “Gosh, G, this is so nice. I’d forgotten what a great cook you are.”

  “You can thank your grandmother Samphire for that,” I told her. “She taught me everything.”

  “Makes a change, doesn’t it, to have a nice mother-in-law. Herman thinks you are one, you know.”

  “Yes,” I said, turning back to the sink and running the water to hide my confusion, for I still wasn’t sure how to take compliments, how much trust I could place in what people had to say. I changed the subject by asking her to tell me about Junior. Maybe that wasn’t a good idea, as it became another emotional roller coaster ride for me. This time Celia seemed quite matter-of-fact as she talked. She went to the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine and took down two glasses and held one up to me, but I shook my head; drinking alcohol is something I had never learned to do. She continued talking as she opened the bottle and poured herself a glass.

  “The thing with Junior and Michael is that they were playing with the big boys and didn’t know they were just small fries. They thought they were real big businessmen, suits and ties—or kareebas when that was in, Chamber of Commerce and Rotary and everything.”

  It took me a while to find my voice. “You mean they didn’t have a factory? What was this Samjam Enterprises, then?”

  Celia laughed and, glass in hand, leaned against the door. “Oh, they had a factory all right. But it was mostly turning out ackee cans stuffed full of compressed ganja. Michael and Junior were like a pair of schoolboys among the sharks. Pinto was the one that got them into it and he was the one that understood the runnings. But then Pinto got into guns and violence and was a crazy cokehead, a real user—I don’t know about Michael, but Junior at least was never into taking drugs, I believe him when he says that. They got cold feet when Pinto decided to go in with the Colombians, who were all over the place by then, introducing a new spin. They were into selling the ganja abroad, but instead of U.S. dollars they were bringing in coke and guns. I think Junior and Michael came to some kind of deal with Pinto—an amicable parting, or so they thought. They stuck to their small-scale op while Pinto went off to the States to do his thing. Junior went ballistic when Shirley went with him.”

  I was trying not to show anything on my face as I listened, but Celia must have sensed what I was thinking.

  “Oh, come on G!” She was smiling when she said it. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know what Junior
was up to? Those thousand-dollar suits? His cars? His racehorses? His houses?”

  “Houses?” I said, as if that gave me something tangible to hold on to. “Celia, you will find this hard to believe, but though Junior came to see me from time to time, I didn’t know a single thing about his life.”

  “You mean, not even your precious Millie made you any the wiser as to what was happening right under your nose? Come on! All the young men in the district were growing ganja for Junior. Everyone. That fellow there, what’s his name again—Bertie—he was in charge of transportation. Your local MP was the facilitator with the police and customs. Everybody had their role in the operation. This is Ganja Nation we’re talking about!”

  Celia took a sip from her glass and then continued as if I wasn’t there.

  “At that time, it was still the politicians running the show, you know, not like now when it’s the drug posses. Junior was nothing but the politicians’ lackey, their bagman, off to Miami every minute to launder the loot or pick up fresh clean dollars. I’m sure he and Michael thought they were part of the inner circle. Then the Americans stepped in and said, hey, this has got to stop. At that time they were willing to play ball with the government—loans, all kinds of aid and fancy promises. But they also said, no more funds, no more loans until you deal with the drug trade, never mind it was all American youth buying the stuff. You must remember that time, G? How they suddenly started to bomb the little airstrips all over the island so the ganja planes couldn’t land and they were spraying the ganja fields from the air or sending in soldiers to burn the crops? There were always these pictures in the papers of these bags and bags of ganja going up in smoke. Everyone for miles around getting high from the fumes. Men, women, and children. Even the parson, people used to joke. Well, the whole thing was all a big poppyshow. But some of the foot soldiers had to be sacrificed to make the government look as if they were serious about rooting out the drug barons, the ‘Mister Bigs.’”

  She took another sip while I chopped up the rest of the salad.

  “Michael was one of the first to go. Remember how he was blown away and everybody said it was a drug deal gone wrong? Remember all the strange killings of prominent individuals around the same time? Some little boy was always arrested and some spurious motive for the killing provided by the police while the rumour mills ground out that another ‘Mister Big’ has been taken out. So everyone was pleased that the police were finally doing something. But it was all part of the same scenario, nothing but a purge and some scapegoating by the real big men for the benefit of the Americans.”

  Celia came over to where I was standing and took a piece of celery from the bowl, dipped it into the dressing I was mixing, and bit it. The casual way she was acting when making these revelations was unnerving me, but she just carried on.

  “You know, G, Junior is lucky to be alive today. His name was on that list. But he got a tipoff and dived deep underground. He must have had his escape route well prepared by this time, for he just vanished. He had already met Dolly by then, which is probably why he ended up in Canada.”

  “How much of this did you know?”

  “I didn’t know anything at all about it while it was happening. It’s only recently that Junior’s been willing to talk about it. Or even been willing to come back home. He’s been running scared all these years. Can you imagine?”

  “But did you know Junior was into the drug trade and all that?”

  She sipped again and made a face, as if she had to consider this.

  “Yes and no. I mean, there were always rumours, but if I tackled him he always denied it. But in my heart I knew that he was mixed up in something. Like you, I found Junior secretive. Herman was suspicious of him, too, although he liked him as a person. Herman himself was a bit paranoid at the time, and he thought we shouldn’t have too much to do with him. I kept in touch because of Shirley, really. He was my only connection to Shirley.”

  “So he is the one who told you?”

  “Yes, but not until long after. Junior actually skipped the country before we knew anything had happened to Shirley. I had no idea where he had gone to. Of course I went crazy when Michael got killed and I tried to contact Junior—only to find out that nobody knew where he was. After that it was like waiting for a bomb to go off. I honestly expected any day to hear they’d found Junior’s body. Then I got a strange phone call one day. At my office. The person just said in this whispery voice, ‘Junior’s okay. Don’t worry.’ That was all. Then she hung up. It was a woman with what sounded like a foreign accent—and in those days of course we couldn’t check to see who had called. But at least that took a load off my mind.”

  “Celia, this is getting to be like something out of a thriller,” I couldn’t help saying, rather sourly I’m afraid, for I was beginning to find the whole thing a little unreal. I found it hard to believe I knew the people Celia was talking about.

  “It gets even more like a B-grade movie plot. Next thing—well, some months later, actually—I got this letter with a Canadian stamp, I couldn’t make out the postmark, and the letter was just a few sentences scrawled on this sheet of paper—no address, no signature, but it was Junior’s writing, and he told me to burn it as soon as I’d read it. The only letter I got from him, actually, for many years, and believe me I was so frightened I did take a match to it.”

  She laughed and took a sip from her glass and stood there turning the stem round and round while I stopped what I was doing to watch her, impatient for her to go on.

  “So, what was the letter about?”

  “Telling us what had happened to Shirley, how her body had been identified. Of course, we had no idea she was missing. Herman used some legal contacts he had to verify that the story was true, and it was after that that we came down to tell you she had died and—I’m really sorry now—I made up that stupid story for you. Junior had this one friend in New York whom he trusted, or maybe Shirley trusted, to this day I don’t know who this person is. But he used this person to keep an eye on Shirley and it was he—or she—who let him know what had happened. It was this person who identified her and buried her too—Junior sent money for the funeral, but of course he dared not go. He believed that Shirley had been killed as a warning to him, or to draw him out of hiding, but I’m not sure that was really so, because why would they dump the body without ID? Another scenario floated was that Pinto had engineered it because if he was ever arrested, he was afraid she knew too much about his dealings. Who knows? Of course, Junior didn’t tell me all of this in the letter, I got it out of him much later.”

  We broke it off then, and I was glad, for Herman appeared, followed shortly by Ashley, and we realized that it was time for dinner. All the time we were putting the food in serving dishes and getting it on the table I felt again as if a great band was compressing my chest. I felt better when we all were seated at the table and began to eat. We talked about inconsequential things, and Ashley chattered about her friends. I’m proud to say that when it came to the dessert, Celia let the first taste of my devil’s food cake with the caramel topping melt in her mouth before she declared it a triumph. Take that, Mrs. Reverend Doctor, I thought, not at all ashamed of my childishness.

  109

  THE WEEKEND AT CELIA’S was supposed to be for relaxation, but that last evening after dinner I sat on the couch downstairs pretending to read. I was feeling restless and dissatisfied. I now had answers to some of my questions, it is true, as to what had happened to Shirley and to Junior as well—or at least it was all in the open now—but I couldn’t stop asking myself why these things had happened. To my children. Why both Shirley and Junior had chosen to go down that path. I think Celia sort of dismissed Junior’s days in the drug business as youthful folly, greed, laziness, just following the path laid out by his friends, the path to an easy fortune without any thought about the consequences. Though it seems he had ended up with nothing for his pains, for he had had to run and leave it all behind. Some of it anyway. Good! I th
ought. I hope he suffered. I was still feeling some resentment towards Junior, and I knew that he and I had a lot to work through.

  Celia had vanished after dinner to catch up on some work, but now she came and sat beside me and we chatted idly about this and that until we inevitably turned to the main topic of the weekend, which was Shirley.

  When she described Shirley as the adventurous one in the family I’d agreed, she’d always been the first one out there to do anything on a dare or to try something new, she always wanted to travel, to find out what was over the next hill. But then Celia said, “Shirley’s adventuring wasn’t so much in search of something new as to recover something she felt she had lost. Or never had in the first place. She told me so once. She wanted to find something to fill a permanent ache inside her. Like a black hole, she said. Only she didn’t know what would fill it.”

  “Shirley?” I was taken aback, for I’d never thought of Shirley in that light. She was always the happy-go-lucky sunshine girl. “Well, something must have happened to her after she left home,” I said. “That doesn’t sound like the Shirley I knew.”

  Celia didn’t answer, she started to study her nails, looking at both her hands as if the answer was hidden there. The silence got uncomfortable, and I began to remember some of the things she had said in anger to me not so long ago, how indifferent I was to my children, how I acted as if I didn’t care. Was that the impression I had given to all of them? Certainly not to Shirley!

  “She felt this way from when she was little, all right,” Celia finally said. “We used to talk about it the times when I came home to visit, before I went away to the States, so we would have been in our early teens then. You know that’s the time girls talk about feelings, that sort of thing. Papa must have been at home still, for I don’t remember visiting when he wasn’t there. At least not until I came back from university and came down by myself. I’m not saying that Shirley used those actual words at that time, but she always talked about feeling this great emptiness. I mean, I wasn’t feeling so hot myself, but I thought I knew what I had lost. She didn’t.”