Tell No-One About This

by Jacob Ross

  Nana stopped Cecil at the door, turned and faced the men.

  ‘Dunno what we’d ha done widdout y’all. But I don’t want nobody hangin around here while this bizness goin on. Go home. I not sayin’ so twice.’

  There was something cold, almost insulting in the way she addressed them.

  ‘And pray for us,’ Aya added, ‘if de spirit move y’all.’

  ‘Right!’ Nana cut in. She nudged Aya aside. ‘You – Cecil – I know how you feelin, but you got to find yourself somewhere else. I don’t want no man ‘round here; this is woman bizness! Gigi…’

  ‘She boiling the water. We need her.’ Aya’s tone was firm.

  The old lady’s voice came through, demanding their presence. Gigi retreated with her mother, Aya and Miss Patsy. Nana closed the bedroom door.

  Gigi kept the fire burning low. The smoke stung her eyes and helped to keep her awake, but at one point she must have dozed off, because her mother was shaking her.

  ‘Water,’ she said.

  The girl stirred and filled the outstretched basin. Nana rushed into the room. There was no end to it, filling and refilling the basin, placing the other pots on the fire to boil, responding to her mother’s demands for water.

  Elaine must want she baby really bad, she thought. To be groanin and cryin so much for it. Papa God was long in handing it to her. Mebbe h’was still searching the sky for the right one. Miss Elaine too impatient though! A pusson should learn to wait and not to suffer demself like that. Besides, it wasn fair; Cecil should share some of the suffering too.

  Gigi reconsidered her decision to ask Papa God for four babies. Four might be too much and p’raps she should wait until she was as big as Nana.

  The storm was over but the house was still cool from the wind. Behind the closed door, the women had been whispering. Now there came a flurry of activity, followed by her mother’s command:

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Hold on love,’ crooned Aya. ‘Make an effort. Come on.’

  ‘What you relaxin’ for?’ her mother snapped. ‘I cyah do it for you. Come on, child!’

  Then Miss Patsy’s voice, ‘I holdin’ you, Elaine.’

  The old woman told them to shut up.

  The little girl shut her eyes, absorbing the drama in the room. Nana laughed and the suddenness, the strangeness of the sound shook her. Elaine was now silent. Patsy came for more water. The old lady muttered something. Her mother chuckled.

  ‘At least the girl goin’ be awright,’ said Nana.

  ‘But the child…’ Aya sounded unable to say the rest.

  Aya’s face was strange when she came out.

  ‘Come, Gi. You want to see?’

  The child got up, not sure about her mother’s reaction to her presence in the bedroom. Aya took her by the shoulder and led her in.

  Elaine lay on the bed, covered and asleep. Beside her was a small doll-like thing, all pink and curled up and perfect. Nana had seen her come in but did not appear to mind. The old woman was mumbling to herself about doctors who didn’t allow her to do her calling and didn’t come when a pusson really need dem. Now this – the failure of her life right there in front of her – to haunt her for the rest of her days.

  Gigi couldn’t figure out their problem. She edged toward the bedside and touched Elaine’s baby – the toes, the hands. She found herself liking their softness. They were smooth – more smooth than warm.

  ‘Is not my fault de baby didn live,’ the old woman said.

  Her mother reached down and lifted it off the sheet. She wrapped it in an old towel, brought it to the hall and placed it on the atama near the fire. She stood over the small bundle for a long time, said something under her breath and went back in.

  The little girl stooped and nudged the bundle, hoping that by touch, she could better understand what the old lady had just said. Nana always told her that a person must never beg. It was better to do without. Elaine must have begged too hard.

  The women were discussing what they should do. They would need the men to dig a place for it. Funny! if they had to send it back, it should be sent up – back to where it came from, not down. There was no sense in that. But…

  ‘Naana!’

  ‘Yesss!’ Her mother’s voice came low and irritable.

  ‘Nana, it movin.’

  The four women seemed to shoot out from the room together.

  ‘What you sayin?’

  Gigi rested a finger on the bundle. ‘Watch, it belly movin.’

  Miss Patsy took the bundle in her massive arms. They hustled back into the room. A sharp slap from Nana and it wailed a long, piercing baby-wail.

  It must have been morning when Gigi walked out onto the step, closed the door and pressed her back against it. Cee-cee birds were quarrelling in the grapefruit tree. Laughter came from the bedroom. She saw Cecil hurrying up the hill.

  ‘She awright?’

  ‘Who? Elaine?’

  The young man nodded.

  ‘Yep, I fink so.’

  ‘An’ – An’…’

  ‘An what?’

  ‘Lemme pass. I goin in.’

  ‘You sleep?’

  ‘Lil bit.’

  ‘I didn’ sleep!’

  ‘Lemme pass. I want to see my woman.’

  ‘You don want to know about de baby?’

  ‘Lemme pass, nah, lil girl! Step aside before I…’

  ‘You can’t go in.’

  ‘Is my girl.’

  ‘Is a lil’ girl.’

  ‘I want to see my ‘ooman. Move!’

  ‘Nuh!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Dunno – is – is ooman bizness.’ She opened the door a crack and quickly squeezed through it, shutting it in Cecil’s face. She crouched before the glowing coalpot listening to the voices in the room, and Aya’s song, softly sung, that always made her think of sunlight.

  SONG FOR SIMONE

  For Peck Edwards

  Every morning the soft bleating of a clarinet and the tinkling of a piano woke the town. At quarter to five for the past fifty years the music came wafting down from the hill above St. George’s. It would pass like bubbles on the wind so that the silence became part of the melody.

  It was always the same: the melody, then the silence that was music too.

  As soon as it died, the cathedral clock on Church Street struck the hour.

  Simone stirred on the fifth and final stroke and stretched her legs over the arm of the settee in the hall where her mother had relegated her – You’z a big girl now. The bedroom too small for two.

  The girl opened her eyes and listened. Sure enough, there came the rumble of Togo’s cart, trundling down her street – Togo, the funny ole fella who foraged among the bins before the trucks arrived to take the refuse away. The thunder of his wheels was fading when the trucks arrived with their usual bang and clatter.

  Soon there would be cars going past, doors banging, feet shuffling in the rooms next door. On the Carenage below, the watchman’s whistle would rise like a stricken bird, releasing the stevedores from their night shift.

  Nita, her mother, came out and switched on the naked lightbulb that shared its light with the two rooms. Still heavy with sleep, she stretched and yawned, shaking herself as though angry at the lethargy of her limbs. There was a stirring in the bedroom, a grunt, the bedsprings protesting, then the scrape of feet on the concrete floor.

  The girl did not like her mother’s new man-friend. She’d decided that the moment he crossed the threshold the night before. But then, she’d never liked any of them – though she said she did when Nita asked.

  ‘Come on, Sim! Get up, girl.’

  With a deft movement, the girl was on her feet. She was as tall as Nita, slim as a whip and still growing.

  Nothing disturbed Nita more than her daughter’s height and what she called her ‘strong complexion’. She couldn’t account for it, she said, since she was not-so-dark and Sim’s father was a regular-size, light-skin fella. Must’ve been
de weather o something.

  Simone busied herself with the small gas stove on the table near the settee, hearing, but not listening to Nita’s girlish voice – a tone she’d learned to associate with the presence of a man-friend.

  The girl worked swiftly, kneading the flour, breaking and rolling the dough into small balls, then flattening each before placing it in the pan of sizzling oil.

  ‘No eggs dis mornin,’ she grumbled. ‘So, is de usual dry bakes an’ milk. Good enough for de man. Not so good for me and me mother.’

  The church clock boomed the half hour. Nita came out dressed for work, the man trailing behind. He avoided her gaze. She had that effect on people. She remembered her mother telling her once that her friend – it was Peter then – used to complain that Sim made him uneasy with those big dark eyes looking right into his head. Well, they were looking into his head. He proved to be a scamp after all – a married one, tobesides.

  Only once did this man look at her – a frank, curious stare. The girl knew how fiercely her mother would attack him if she suspected the slightest hint of an advance in that look.

  Her mother’s fears grew even as Sim grew, warning her always of the same thing. First, it was to stay clear of boys; now it was men she had to beware of. Her mother no longer introduced her menfriends either. They came, stayed a while – some longer than others – then disappeared.

  A frowning, serious fella, this one. He chewed the food as though he was thinking with his jaw. At least the others used to try to smile.

  ‘You know anything ‘bout music?’ Simone asked, staring directly at him. She’d promised Nita she was never going to ask that question to any more of her men-friends. But there it was, a pusson couldn help it; it just popped out.

  Nita was smiling.

  The man took a long time swallowing. He swilled his tongue around his mouth, passed his hand across his lips and raised his brows at her. ‘You call steelpan-music, music?’

  ‘Well… erm – why not?’

  ‘No-no-no! I want a straight answer. Yes or no.’ He placed the rest of his breakfast on the table and rested both elbows on the surface. He’d clasped the fingers of each hand together.

  ‘Yes,’ the girl said, irritable now. ‘S’far as I see, is music, oui.’

  ‘Then,’ the man said, pushing aside his plate. ‘I’z a boss musician. I know all about it.’

  Before plunging into the noise of rushing cars and work-hurrying feet in the street below, Nita turned and fixed the girl.

  ‘James leave some change on de bedroom table. Buy some foodstuff when you come from school. Five dollars is yours for lunch. An’ make sure none ov dem likkle boys or nobody interfere wid you or follow you from school. Don’ cook nothing. I goin see what I scrape up by de ole birds. C’mon James.’ And with that, they were gone.

  Scrape up… Her mother always said that and she hated it. She scraped to make a living, to pay the rent and to send Sim to the Anglican school on Church Street. She bowed and scraped to keep her job as a domestic with Mr. and Mrs. McWiggin – the old couple who lived in the big cream house on the hill above them. It was from their house that the music came each morning to insert itself into the town’s half-sleep.

  To escape the rush and squabble of the tenants from the neighbouring rooms, the girl hastened to the shower outside – a long stem of pipe standing in a small enclosure of corrugated iron sheets. She stripped herself quickly and let the cold water fall on her, scrubbing herself with long luxurious strokes, wary of the eyes that might be fixed on her from the windows of the small dwellings crowding the alleyway.

  There were so many things Nita didn’t know about her. Her mother wanted to be told everything that happened at school. Wherever she wanted to go, Nita made it her duty to accompany her; else, she would have to remain home. The month before, she’d told her about the arrival of her periods. Nita did not react the way the girls at school said their mothers did. Nuuh… the blaastid woman come close to tears, an’ she start talkin funny.

  ‘Don’t want you to do like me, Sim. Do me anything and I goin’ take it, s’long as you give yuhself nuff time to become woman. Sometimes I wish you never grow up. Be glad to take care o’ you for the rest of me life. When I was fourteen I had you. I don’t regret, but it spoil me chances. If you was a boy I wouldn’t mind so much.’

  Then Nita kissed her and she was sad with her mother’s sadness.

  If she was a boy! How many effin times Nita goin tell her that? Eh?

  Simone hummed while she washed. She knew every note, every nuance of the morning melody. Something was missing in that music. Every day for the past year she’d struggled to put her finger on it. T’was like sal’fish without salt; like dumplin that knead too soft and didn go chic when a pusson bite it.

  Last year, during the Carnival, it was terrible. The clarinet and piano played all day, clashing with the chants on the streets below because the people on the hill had put it on loudspeakers. She barely slept that night, and when she did, she dreamt of clarinets and pianos lined upon on Market Hill in an all-out war with the calypsos and steel drums down below.

  ‘Nita!’ she’d begged, ‘Ask dem people you work for, what is de name ov dat music they play every mornin.’

  She knew now that it was called Minuet in G, made up by some ole fella who lived a long-long time before she and she mother born.

  ‘High class music,’ Nita said, as if working in the kitchen of Mister and Mrs. McWiggin made her high class too. ‘Is real music. Classic music o’ something. Dem ole birds been playin it for the past sempty years. Dem fadder an’ gran’fadder used to play it. Dem uses to be gentry once – own a lot o’ land and servants. Now dem have only dat big house and what their son send dem every month from Englan – jus’ enough to keep their nose pointin up. De ole lady always talk about ole times as if she regret it ever change. She say she from pure Irish stock. But somewhere along the line a little nigger-blood creep in. You can’t tell she that though. She’ll drop down dead. De only blood she want to hear about is Irish. Like is a diffrent colour o somethin. Irish is de place where all dem white potato come from, you know.’

  ‘I don’ like no Irish potato,’ Simone muttered.

  ‘Is why you eat it so greedy,’ Nita laughed.

  Fortnights, Nita cursed the meagre sum the McWiggins paid her for washing them, feeding them and cleaning the big ole house. Occasionally, she blessed them for the food they allowed her to take home. She’d begun to worry because the old man was going blind – and dotish too, she suspected – and the old lady’s legs were failing her. ‘Dunno how I goin manage if I lose dem.’

  Simone had never seen the old couple. Yet she felt she knew their faces, wrinkled like white raisins, their nagging voices calling – always calling Nita to lift them, lead them, clean them…

  There was a name for it – if only she could remember the word. It had the same ring of the bell-tower on Church Street. On her way to school, it arrived jusso and perched in her mind: Decline.

  Nita warmed the bowl of chicken, rice and mixed vegetables she’d brought from work. One of the usual power failures had thrown the town in darkness, giving the night outside a closeness that Simone liked. People talked. Cars passed. The night breathed.

  The dirty light of the sputtering stove threw fat shadows across the room. Simone unwound her length till her legs jutted over the settee and waited.

  ‘You like ‘im?’ Nita asked, without turning to look at her.

  ‘Who?’ The girl knew, but thought that she would ask.

  ‘Him, erm, James.’

  ‘Nuh. Don’ think so.’

  Nita turned. ‘You never say that before with…’

  ‘Them others?’

  ‘Yes! You always like dem.’

  ‘Dey was diffrent.’

  ‘How?’ Nita frowned at her.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘You goin like ‘im, Sim. He really, really nice. I know ‘im long time. I jus didn have no time for him, yunno. He s
erious; dat’s all. Used to be a school teacher, and you know what school teacher face look like.’

  ‘What work he doin now?’

  ‘Gov’ment work.’

  ‘Doin what?’

  ‘Uhm.’ Nita’s face was a mixture of anxiety and confusion.

  ‘You not tellin’ me?’

  ‘Is music he teachin.’

  Her mother would have left it at that, but the girl went on, ‘Pan-music, not so?’

  ‘Something so.’

  ‘So why you ‘fraid to say it?’

  ‘You say you don’ like ‘im.’

  ‘It don’ have nothin to do with that.’

  ‘He comin’ later.’ Nita’s eyes were pleading.

  ‘Let ‘im come then.’

  They ate in silence. Nita sulked over the food. Simone chewed with pleasure.

  She extended her arm and traced long, loving fingers down her mother’s face, pausing briefly at her chin. ‘Is nice food,’ she purred.

  Nita smiled back, a child’s smile. ‘Wash the wares,’ she yawned, and went in.

  Mr. James visited regularly. The McWiggins declined slowly. Nita worried increasingly.

  Sometimes, the girl listened to her mother and the man talking long into the night. They laughed a lot. Their laughter even woke her on mornings, just before the minuet came sneaking down the hill to play on her mind for the rest of the day.

  Early one morning, Mr. James got up to work on something he called his ‘new arrangement’. He sat on the only chair in the hall. Through lidded eyes, Simone observed him mumbling over a jumble of lines and scratches on a sheet of paper. Occasionally he hummed, scratched the paper with his pencil, tapped his feet, then mumbled and scratched again. She recognised the tune. It was a calypso called ‘Busy Body’.

  The man stopped when the minuet started, cocking his head at the notes that came raining down on them.

  ‘Ludwig Van Beethoven,’ he breathed. ‘Minuet in G. “G” as in Jeezan Christ. You travel damn far, man. Not bad. Not bad at all. It have some conviction there. But it come from de head. Not de heart.’

  Simone sat up abruptly. ‘You notice too?’