by Amanda Smyth
• • •
ONE AFTERNOON, DRUNK and staggering all over the road on his way home from Jimmy’s bar, Roman collided with Mrs. Jeremiah as she was coming out of the grocery and sent her toppling like a bag of plums. Mrs. Maingot was walking to the post office and saw her fall. Then she saw Roman try to help her up, but then he fell too—on top of Mrs. Jeremiah. Mrs. Maingot said it was like a comedy but no one was laughing. She rushed to where they were struggling like two animals and she, Mrs. Maingot, started to shout at Roman. She helped Mrs. Jeremiah to her feet and told Roman that she would never put up with half of what Tassi D’Abadie put up with and she was glad her husband had been a decent man and why did God take away a good man like Wilfred so young and leave him to run about the place like a demon. Roman looked down at the ground as if he had lost something there but couldn’t remember what it was.
Mrs. Maingot guided Mrs. Jeremiah home to her little wooden house and she settled her into a chair in the veranda. She did not go inside the house because Mrs. Jeremiah said she would rather sit in the breeze. For a few moments, Mrs. Maingot sat on a stool while the old lady kept her eyes closed. She was about to leave quietly when Mrs. Jeremiah spoke in a voice like a sudden rain.
“Wilfred is doing all right; he is at peace.”
Later, Mrs. Maingot told us she turned cold and hot at the same time, and her heart began to thud.
“Jesus is with him and our Lord has granted him everlasting life. If you wish him back you keep him between this world and that.”
Mrs. Jeremiah smiled but not at Mrs. Maingot. She smiled at something or someone hovering above her head. Then she closed her eyes and nodded.
“Watch for butterflies,” she said. “Just now plenty butterflies will come around you. They are a sign from Wilfred. His body will never be found but that don’t matter, the sea is a big place. And don’t worry about Joan. She will meet a good man and they will have plenty children.” Then she told Mrs. Maingot she would be taken care of in her dying years. The worst was over—joy was on its way.
Mrs. Maingot hurried home. She lay on her bed and thought about her dead husband, and wept. Then she tried not to think about him, afraid she might keep him trapped between two worlds. Then she cried some more. In the end, she fell asleep. When she woke it was dark and Joan was standing in the lamplight looking up at the ceiling and there were two huge yellow butterflies hanging upside down there. Mrs. Maingot thought she was dreaming but Joan raised the lamp and pointed at them.
That evening Mrs. Maingot came over to our house and told Aunt Tassi what had happened. Aunt Tassi was surprised; Roman hadn’t mentioned anything about Mrs. Jeremiah. He was sleeping in the back room, she said. When he woke she would ask him all about it. Mrs. Maingot didn’t seem too bothered. She was happy and there was brightness in her eyes as though she had been drinking rum. She kept glancing around the room and I wondered what she was looking for. There weren’t any butterflies.
When she left, Aunt Tassi went to the bedroom and saw a bat sucking on Roman’s toe. The bat kept moving its big black wings and fanning Roman, who was sleeping soundly. Miss McCartney said the tongue of this bat is shaped like a lancet and when it pierces a vein there is little or no pain so you can sleep right through it while it drinks your blood. My aunt feared the bat was a sign. She threw open the shutters and took up a broom and she drove the creature out into the night. After that, Aunt Tassi did not sleep for worrying.
Next morning Roman was still sleeping and we were sitting at the table eating salt fish and hot bake and the sun was filling up the kitchen. I was thinking about my history class with Miss McCartney that afternoon and about my Christopher Columbus project, the picture I had sketched of him which needed coloring in, when my aunt cleared her throat.
“The tree is full of limes. They ready to drop. After school one of you must fill a bag and carry them up to Mrs. Jeremiah.”
Vera set up her face as if in horror.
“I have extra lessons,” Violet said, and I knew at once she was lying.
They all looked at me.
“Celia,” Aunt Tassi said.
I put down my fork and finished chewing my buttery bake. I drank some cocoa, sweet and thick. Then I wiped my mouth on my arm and said, “I’m not scared.”
THE PATH TO Mrs. Jeremiah’s house was narrow and thick with brown leaves from the big mahogany tree. There was a damp smell and I saw a lot of mosquitoes. They made a dark cloud over a drum of water and I climbed the steps of the house. I thought the water shouldn’t be there—before you know it everyone in Black Rock would be coming down with yellow fever. I was surprised by the pots of bougainvillea on either side of the entrance to the shabby little house. They must have been a gift. Over the doorway was a cross; I couldn’t tell if it was made of stone or bone. There were two chairs in the veranda with blue torn cushions and I tried to picture Mrs. Maingot sitting on one of them. There was a bowl of water on a small round table. I wondered if it was holy water. Then I heard someone inside.
“Hello,” I said.
“You the orphan girl.”
“I brought you some limes.” I pushed the curtain where a door should be. “My aunt says sorry about Uncle Roman.”
I put down the brown paper bag. It was dark inside and the shutters were closed except for the kitchen where they were slightly open and a little bit of brassy light was slicing its way in. The old woman had her hand on a large book on the table. In that half-light, after the bright afternoon glare, it looked like a little hoof. There was a candle on the table and its flame was low. One of Mrs. Jeremiah’s eyes was cast near the door where I was standing.
“She should put him out but he won’t last too long anyhow. Three years or less.”
“Who?”
“Roman. Before he does something. He can be dangerous. You mustn’t be rude to him or he will hurt you.”
“I am not rude to Roman.”
“Not with your mouth.” She tapped the side of her skull. “In your head.”
“Marriage is not for you. But you could have it if you want it. Men will want you like they want a glass of rum. Drink you up and pee you out. One man will love you. But you won’t love him. You will harm him. You will destroy his life.” Now, she was looking at me as if she didn’t like me. My stomach was jumping like there were frogs in it.
“I never hurt anyone.” My voice sounded small.
“You don’t believe me. That don’t matter. Just now you start to menstruate. Tassi will let you stay home from school, but only for one day because”—and this part she said in a high voice—“you have to get accustomed to that pain like all women do in the world.” Then, “You’ll see.”
I don’t know why, but I said, “Aunt Tassi is good to me.”
“They tell you things about your mother and father,” she said, and nodded. Then she seemed to be listening to someone else at the back of the room.
“Forget them. Forget them or make blood spill. You will make blood spill.” She gasped a little and then she nodded again. She kept nodding.
“The one you love will break your heart in two.” Her voice was higher now. “You don’t care what happen to get what you want. It don’t matter to you.” She shook her head. “You won’t die in this country. You’ll die in a foreign place.” Mrs. Jeremiah shuddered as if she was cold. Then she tossed something into the air, and I caught it. It was a piece of black rock, the size of a big tooth. “Carry this with you always. It come from the rock, right here. It will keep bad luck at bay and save you from the hard life you will make for yourself.” She got up and put her hand out. My heart was beating fast.
“Now I will exorcise you,” she said. Then, in a calmer voice, “Come. I will help you.”
Mrs. Jeremiah began to speak in a language I could not understand. Father Carmichael had talked about speaking in tongues, but I could not imagine this ugly speech was the language of saints and angels. I turned and ran through the veranda, almost knocking over the bowl of water, a
nd I ran down the steps and onto the path and I kept running, all the way down Stony Hill until I reached the main road which was lined with other little houses. These had lights glowing inside and I saw shadows moving in the light. I ran past Mrs. Maingot’s house and Campbell’s Hardware Store and along the curved road to Jimmy’s bar. For some reason I went inside and looked for Roman but he wasn’t there. Someone shouted something but I didn’t hear what it was. I ran past the church and wondered if I should go inside, but then I saw the door was locked, so I kept running to where the road separates along the track to the house. The lights were on and I could see Aunt Tassi’s big dark shape in the kitchen. Vera and Violet were sitting in the veranda. I flew up the steps. Aunt Tassi was standing over the stove. I arrived panting and sweating and puffing.
“Why you looking so red-faced? You saw Mrs. Jeremiah?”
• • •
NEXT MORNING, I was thinking about Mrs. Jeremiah and all that she had said when I overheard Mrs. Maingot talking to Aunt Tassi. Apparently, Joan’s friend had come. “Thirteen is early,” I heard her say, “but when the curse come early, what are you to do.” Looking out where the two women were speaking on the steps, I wondered who this friend was and why she was a curse. At the window I said, “I wish we could have visitors. This place is always so dead.” The two women turned and looked at me, and then they looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Oh Lord,” Mrs. Maingot said, and threw up her skinny arms. “Celia really is a strange child! Where she came from, Tassi?” Aunt Tassi looked at her as if to say, Yes, yes, I know just what you mean.
It was only later when I heard Angela Hernandez telling someone how the blood poured out of Joan like it came from a bucket that I realized Joan’s friend was in fact her period. All that afternoon I wondered, If Mrs. Jeremiah is right, when will that happen to me?
So said so done: three days later I woke with pain in my stomach. It was a new hot ache that wrapped itself around my lower back and middle. When Aunt Tassi came in and told me to dress for school, I said I was sick and showed her my bloated stomach and the brown patch on the sheet which looked like I had spilled cocoa. I must have looked unwell because, just as Mrs. Jeremiah said she would, Aunt Tassi said I could stay home from school today, but only today because I would have to “get accustomed to that pain like all women do in the world.” When she said this a chill rushed through my body; Aunt Tassi didn’t seem to notice. Sitting on the edge of my bed, she said that I must now be careful because I would be able to have children and before I knew it men would be coming around and I must know to push them away.
“Just now you having a baby and you’re still a baby yourself.”
“Like my mother.”
“Yes, just like your mother.”
“And like you too.”
“Yes, just like me.”
Aunt Tassi got up and went into her room and came back carrying a piece of white thin cloth. She folded it once, twice, three times, until the cloth was a fat little rectangle. She told me to put this in my panties to catch the blood. When it was full, not too full, because it would start to smell bad like an old piece of iron, I must put it to soak in the outside sink and hang it up on the line under the house.
TWO
WHEN ROMAN WAS AWAY OUR HOUSE WAS BRIGHTER AND quieter. I felt almost happy when it was just Aunt Tassi and me. This did not happen often. But soon after I had started my period, we were supposed to visit his dying mother in Charlotteville. The plan was to set off at sunrise. In Scarborough, Roman would rent four mules from an estate worker who hired them out cheap; the girls would sit on one, Aunt Tassi on another, I would have my own mule, and Roman would ride out front on the largest. We would ride out to the northeastern part of the island, and then down through the hilly parts, toward Speyside, and reach the small coastal village at nightfall. It was a long journey. Aunt Tassi did not want to go because she did not like old Mrs. Bartholomew. I didn’t want to go either, so when I woke in the morning, I said I had a fever. (You can fake a fever if you dampen your sheets and pillow with a little water.) I could tell that Aunt Tassi knew I wasn’t ill at all, and when she used my sickness as an excuse to let Roman go alone, I was pleased. But Roman was not pleased, and I knew that he was angry with me when, standing in the passageway, his black eyes crawled like two beetles over my nightie and settled on my face.
“Tassi say you sick. How come you look so well?”
I watched his lips. They were shapeless, as if God had taken a crayon and made them any old way.
“You looking real good to me.”
I wanted to go in my room but I couldn’t move, as though I was glued to the spot.
“I hear you’re a real woman now. Tassi say your ‘friend’ come.”
He rubbed his hand over the front of his trousers, and for the first time I felt a little bit afraid. He had never done that before.
“Your pussy turn into a nice big cat.”
WHEN THEY LEFT, the sun was climbing down the mango tree and Aunt Tassi was standing on the steps and waving. She looked sad and I guessed this was because Vera and Violet had begged her to let them go because they liked the sea down there and they liked the journey, too, and she had said yes. Through the shutters I watched Roman walk up the path toward the main road with my cousins dressed up like two dolls and I knew with every one of the thirty-three bones Miss McCartney told me we have in our spines, that I hated him.
As soon as they’d gone, Aunt Tassi slowed right down. For two days she did little but sing songs and pick guavas and make jam and stew and guava cheese. I helped her prepare them, scooping out the pink flesh, plucking out the worms. When her arms grew tired I stirred the large pots. Every now and then I wanted to tell her about the way Roman had spoken to me, but I was afraid that she wouldn’t believe me.
With Roman away, Aunt Tassi did not cook large meals. Instead we ate bread and corned beef and drank water and coconut milk from the yard. On the third day, the air grew very still and by late afternoon we knew a storm was coming. While Aunt Tassi was cutting cloth to make curtains, I followed her around the table where the flowery material sent by Aunt Sula was spread, holding a little tin of pins. It was hot enough to faint and the room grew so dark I thought we might soon need a candle. Yet it was only four o’clock.
“Aunt Tassi,” I said, “tell me about when you were a girl.”
“Oh Lord,” she said.
“Please.”
She lifted her eyes and shook her big head, which was wrapped like a candy in a yellow scarf. I thought she was annoyed and felt sorry I had said anything. But then she said, “Too hot to make these curtains. I can hardly see,” and she walked slowly over to the bamboo seat and stepped out of her rattan slippers and sat down. Through the window, the sky was a dark backdrop and the grass was a blackish green. I sat myself on the wooden floor by her large, dry feet.
To begin with, Aunt Tassi did not say very much, and she seemed unsure of what she wanted to say. Then she started to speak. For two hours, I sat with my back straight as a stick and listened.
When they were small, Aunt Tassi said, Grace (my mother) and Sula pretended to be bushes. They called themselves Pilil and Lala and they jumped out on her like jumbies, especially in the night when she was going outside to do her business.
“One night, when the moon was full, they wait behind the guava tree and as I pass they sprang like two cats.” Aunt Tassi put up her hands like claws.
“Well, I flew screaming in the air and then collapsed. They come running. I lay in the grass completely still. They fan my face and blow on it; when they pick up my arms and lift my legs they heavy like flour bags. They were sure I was dead and they start to bawl. And then I opened my eyes.”
My aunt made her eyes big like a bullfrog.
“That was the last time they tease me,” she said, and she prodded the air with her thick brown finger.
“Every day we walk through the bush to the river. The sun made the rocks hot. We sit on them and thro
w coins in the water and dive down to find them. And when the rocks too hot, we sit under Manchanille trees. But only if it hadn’t been raining.” She suddenly looked serious. “Or the water might drop from the leaves and blister our skin or get inside our eyes and make them blind.
“Once there was a stupid English lady. She came right here to Tobago and found a Manchanille plum on the ground. She thought it was a West Indian apple and took a big bite. She burn up her whole mouth. Inside her stomach swell with huge blisters.”
Aunt Tassi put her hand on her stomach and made a face. “Imagine you pick a fruit you never saw in your life and put it in your mouth just so.
“Imagine.”
She went on to tell me about a place where the river met the sea, not the river where I nearly drowned, but another river, and one particular day there was a large shape there like a boulder. It was white and brown and they were sure it was a rock until Sula saw it sway in the water. When Grace swam toward it she saw that it wasn’t a rock at all, but a carcass of a giant turtle and pieces of its rotting flesh were coming away in the current. “That carcass was something else. We prayed over the bones like they belonged to a friend. Sula said a prayer and threw grass and flowers on top.”
Aunt Tassi had never talked to me in this way before. Every time she finished one story, I’d think, Whatever happens please don’t stop. After hearing about the turtle, I was sure she was going to stand up and say, Enough now, but she didn’t. Instead, she told me about another time. “It always stuck in my head, when this pregnant girl fall down in the road. I ran to find a doctor, and Grace and Sula delivered the tiny baby right there in St. Mary’s schoolyard.
“Right there,” Aunt Tassi said, again. “Like it was a hospital.”
“Who cut the cord?” I asked, trying to imagine how this could be done.
“Your mother,” she said.
“She was brave,” I said. “She saved the baby’s life.”
Then I said, “Why did my mother die?”