by Amanda Smyth
“To be honest,” she said, “when I saw your necklace, I put away any doubts I might have had about employing you. My husband says I worry too much about these things, but I always say, better to be safe than sorry. The pendant is pretty.”
I felt for Aunt Sula’s gold cross. “Thank you.”
“One day Brigid put a donkey’s eye in the pram. I can’t have that sort of superstition in this house. Apart from anything else, Consuella might have put it in her mouth and choked.”
I didn’t tell her that I knew about the smooth and round seed that looked like a donkey’s eye, that it was sometimes placed among the blankets of a newborn to keep the baby safe from evil spirits, and that if I had been Brigid I might have done the same thing. And I didn’t tell her about the piece of black rock from Mrs. Jeremiah that I kept under my pillow.
SHE TOOK ME upstairs into her large, dark, and cool bedroom where a beautiful carved mahogany bed was still unmade from her afternoon sleep and a mosquito net was hanging over it. There was a black-and-white photograph of Helen Rodriguez on the wall. Her pale shoulders were bare and her eyes seemed to say, I like you very much. “A present to my husband soon after we got engaged.”
The wooden shutters were closed and the ceiling fan was spinning slowly. There were clothes scattered about on the floor. They looked like her underclothes; they were silky and light colored. “I’m not the tidiest person in the world,” she said. Her dressing table was covered with bottles and brushes and a little dainty seat was pulled out. There were beads strung across the middle mirror and a scarf draped on the smaller mirror, to the right. A drawer was open; inside I saw lipsticks and rouge and powder. She picked up a large glass bottle.
“Two years ago I brought in a priest to bless the house. This is a container of holy water, should you ever need it for the children.” She said this in a serious way and I wondered why the children would ever need holy water. “If anything should happen, you can sprinkle it on them. Like they do in church.”
In a small attached room was Consuella’s brand-new cot and a cupboard filled with her tiny clothes, perfectly ironed and folded. There was another cupboard with only toys. Some of them looked expensive and I could tell that many had come from overseas. Joe’s bedroom was at the end of the passageway. It was painted his favorite color, she said, light blue. His father had built him a large airplane and hung it from the ceiling. I told Helen Rodriguez that it looked real and the blue looked like sky.
“If you traveled on a proper airplane you would never say that,” she said, and I was sorry I had said anything.
Then, “My husband is good with his hands. His hands can build and they can heal. You know that for yourself.”
“Yes, madam.”
“He qualified as a surgeon, too; he carries out operations at the hospital.”
I didn’t know why she told me this, perhaps to make him sound even more important.
There were two beds. When the boy felt afraid of the dark—“he often has terrible dreams”—his mother slept in the other bed. “Joe has a strong character,” she said, “just like his father. He needs a lot of understanding and attention. I hope you’ll get along.”
AFTER SHE HAD bathed and dressed and I had put away my things, we walked together to Cipriani Boulevard to collect Joe from school. She was wearing a shift dress with a collar, and her slip-on shoes had little heels. She looked attractive and delicate, but like a flower that might blow away in a strong wind. I was glad to walk beside her, pushing the navy pram with Consuella, and I noticed that people looked at us as we walked along the edge of the small park. There were swings and a colorful merry-go-round and children were playing there. And some of the people we saw were friendly and they said good afternoon. As we passed these grand houses, I found myself wanting to walk slowly so that I could look inside them.
It did not take long to reach the school. Joe was waiting outside the gates. At first he didn’t say anything; then his mother told him to say good afternoon to Celia, and he did.
THAT NIGHT I closed the door to my room. I turned off the light and lay on my bed. I could make out the dark oblong of my cupboard, like an upright coffin. Outside, a toad was making a lot of noise. I could hear crickets, too. All over this island, I thought, there are toads and crickets making noise. And then I thought about the toads and crickets in Black Rock. And then I decided not to think about Black Rock, and went to sleep.
NEXT DAY, WHEN Helen Rodriguez suggested that I wear the last maid’s uniform, I lied and said it wasn’t in the drawer where she’d left her things. I didn’t tell her that I had seen a dress which might have been a uniform among her old clothes but it was shabby and stained and I didn’t want to wear it. I was surprised when she said she would “run one up right now,” on her Singer sewing machine.
I stood in her sewing room with my arms up and out, watching her down on her bare knees on the wooden floor while measuring and pinning my hem. If one month ago someone had told me that I’d be working in a house in St. Clair, Port of Spain, Trinidad, and that the English madam of the house would be sewing me a new dress, I wouldn’t have believed them. The material was a small yellow and white check and there was just enough, and because I was tall, it was a modern knee-length fit. It seemed a shame to use it only for working in the house. When Dr. Emmanuel Rodriguez came home from surgery that afternoon, he said my uniform looked “perfect,” like it was made for me. I said it was.
MARVA CAME IN every day apart from Sunday. She lived in nearby St. James, so if there was an emergency, she said, as there was just the other day when Joe fell down the front steps and “crack his head like an egg” and the girl was as usual nowhere in sight, they could call on her. The people next door to where Marva lived had a telephone. Sometimes she wished she could move away and then no one would bother her. Or better still, she said, migrate to New York. She had always wanted to go to New York. “New York has so many people you could get lost there. You see people in a crowd. No one would remember you. Not like here where everybody know your business.”
I didn’t ask her for it, but all the same, Marva gave me a timetable of her chores. She started work at 6:30 a.m. She made breakfast for 7:30, and then she spent the rest of the morning cooking lunch. After lunch she washed the dishes. Most days, if she was lucky, she left the house at 2:00 p.m. Once a week she went to the market and bought vegetables and fruits. Helen Rodriguez ordered groceries on a Thursday and they were delivered to the house on Saturdays. William’s brother Solomon brought them. “Sometimes Solomon brings so many bags you’d think Mrs. Rodriguez was feeding the whole of Port of Spain. But other times they deliver hardly anything at all. As if she forget everything she need when she telephone the order. That make my job difficult.” Marva said this in such a miserable way, I wondered why she didn’t find another job somewhere else.
“I really don’t have time to get into all the things they have going on in this house,” she said, on my first day. And when I said, “What things?” she said, “I have my own troubles but no one ever seem to think about that.” She shuffled around the kitchen in a cotton dress and a green apron. She wore a green hat with a little peak; it made me think of a nurse’s hat. But nurses were supposed to be kind, and from what I could tell there was nothing kind about her. William said Marva looked as if she was all day sucking a lime. “She not really sour. Marva just take a little time to know you.”
ELEVEN
I SOON GOT INTO A ROUTINE. I WAS UP AT DAWN AND IF I hadn’t laid the table the night before, then I did it first thing. I put juice, cereal, bread, jams, and cheese on the table. When breakfast was over I cleared the plates and gave them to Marva. I polished brass or dusted. I made up the beds and swept the floors. By lunchtime the floors were mopped and the table was laid once again. I served lunch. Then I cleared the table when lunch was over. There were many dishes and plates to clear. After lunch the house was quiet and still. Before returning to work, Dr. Emmanuel Rodriguez sometimes rested with his
wife, or he went into his office and read. Sometimes I saw him reading or writing at his desk. When the baby was sleeping (she did not always like to sleep), and if William did not sit with me outside, I went into my room and lay down on my narrow bed. The yard was silent and it was also very hot. It felt good to close my eyes and drift away, as if the world was dripping with heat and I was melting into it.
In the afternoon, when Consuella woke, I dressed and fed her and put her in the pram. Then I took her to Cipriani Boulevard and met Joe outside the school gates. We walked up as far as the White House or up to Stollmeyer’s Castle on the corner. White House and Stollmeyer’s Castle. I liked the way their names sounded. And I liked the way the Savannah looked, with its large trees in the golden evening light and the people sitting on benches underneath them. On the way back we stopped off at the store and I bought Joe a Popsicle or a press (a cup of shaved ice with syrup) or a chocolate bar with the six cents his mother had given me. Supper was at seven. Then, after supper, I went upstairs and put the children to bed. It was usually late when I went into my room and listened to music on the old radio.
Every Sunday, the Rodriguez family went to the morning service at Our Lady’s Church in Maraval. While they were gone, I washed my clothes and hung them out. I dusted and mopped inside my room. Then I set my hair, scrubbed my fingernails, soaked my feet in a bowl with lime, and scraped away the dead, hard skin. I rubbed cocoa butter into my hands, elbows, and knees. In the afternoons, I put on my blue dress and made my way across the Savannah to the Botanical Gardens. Here, there were all kinds of trees; some were enormous and strong with thick trunks, like the African pine, or the silk cotton tree, and the banyan with its big sad head, and if I felt like it I sat underneath one of them. But there were fine trees, too, like the star apple tree, and the weeping ficus, and one I never knew the name of that had pink flowers like powder puffs. Near the road, in front of the Governor’s House, a brass band played the kind of tunes that made you feel happy and sad at the same time: “Take Me Back to Georgia” and “Under the Moonlight” and “Don’t Leave, My Love.”
At the end of the day, I went to the Anglican church on the west side of the Savannah. The church was always full and the people there were well dressed; a lot of them looked like me. There was a statue of Jesus in the corner, which I liked. His robe was open and inside it you could see a red, bright heart with rays of light fanning out. When the service was over, the old priest stood at the door and said goodbye, as if each one of us mattered to him a great deal.
• • •
THOSE EARLY DAYS in the Rodriguez house passed smoothly, but for one thing. Joe would not let me dress him for school. When I served juice he pushed his glass away. If I put food on his plate he wouldn’t eat. He shoved his bowl or plate across the table, shook his head, and tightened up his mouth. He refused to let me walk him to school, so his father had to take him before he left for work, which meant arriving before anyone else. I collected him at the school gates (with this he had no choice) but he did not speak to me; to his baby sister, yes. I watched him leaning and cooing and whispering into Consuella’s pram. Apart from this, our afternoon walk was made in silence. When we reached the store he pointed at whatever he wanted and I paid for it. No words were exchanged between us. It was uncomfortable.
He refused to let me bathe him, so his mother had to stop whatever she was doing and come upstairs. At first she made fun of him. She joked and said, “Come on, come on, my little mule.” She tried to persuade him that I was a good person and that he could trust me, taking him to one side, speaking softly. “Celia is here to help. Celia wants to be your friend. Celia is from Tobago, you liked Tobago when you went there with Daddy and me.” I heard her say, “Celia is not like Brigid, she’s much nicer than Brigid.” Dr. Emmanuel Rodriguez was surprised. More than once he told Joe to “cut out this nonsense” and for a little while he was better but it did not last long. Dr. Emmanuel Rodriguez threatened him with punishment. One day, he took off his belt to beat him and Joe ran upstairs and hid. Helen Rodriguez said a strap was not the answer. Seemed to me it didn’t matter what they said or did, Joe’s mind was made up.
A change in his behavior came only after a very disturbing event and it happened after only one month of my working in the house. One evening, I went into the upstairs bathroom and saw Joe there brushing his teeth and he turned around and with his blue eyes narrow like two slits spat at me—in my face—and hissed “nigger.” Without thinking I grabbed his thick dark hair and held him firmly and took a mouthful of water from the glass I was carrying and spat right back at him. In shock, he opened his mouth wide and then began to scream. I tried to hush him but he ran to the other side of the room and pressed his back flat into the wall. I was sure the whole street could hear him. His mother came rushing in, wearing only her bedclothes, and she looked almost afraid of me, and she held her son as though he was in danger. Her frightened face was white and long.
In a calm voice I did not recognize I said, “Before you say anything to me, ask your son what he did,” and I ran from the room and down the steps into the yard and the darkness, and I ran up to the end of it, and I put my back against the toolshed, and slid to the ground wondering what would come of this event.
NEXT MORNING, WILLIAM arrived early. Everyone was still asleep. He sat beside me on the bench where I was watching the sun rising, lighting up the yard. I hadn’t slept well. When I told him what had happened, he shook his head. “There’s nothing worse in the world than a child spitting.”
I said, “There are plenty worse things in this world.”
AFTER BREAKFAST, DR. Emmanuel Rodriguez called me to his study. I sat down opposite him, across from his large desk. Joe had told him about the incident, he said.
“I can only apologize for this appalling behavior.” He was looking straight at me and his tone was serious. “It was more than ungracious. It was rude and it will never happen again.”
I wondered exactly what Joe had said to him. Perhaps, the truth. Dr. Emmanuel Rodriguez hoped that I would accept his apology, and not for one minute think of leaving. “Please give us another chance. My wife feels very badly about it. She would like you to know that she is also very sorry.”
When he’d finished, I was so relieved I could have dropped right there on the ground.
“Will you accept my apology, please, Celia?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“You’ve fitted in so well. We’ve all grown fond of you. I’m certain these problems with Joe are left over from Brigid.” Then, “So will you stay with us?”
“Yes, sir.”
He got up from his chair. “Excellent.”
At that moment, I decided that I liked Dr. Emmanuel Rodriguez. His eyes were a greenish brown; the color of grass in need of rain.
LATER THAT SAME day, I put a dollar from my first month’s salary into the pocket of my blue dress and I set off in the hot sun, walking in the direction of town, not quite knowing where I was going but following William’s instructions, the list of places that he said I should look out for.
Before long I found myself crossing a busy road. It was very hot and the sun beat down on my head, and as I walked down Frederick Street I wished that I had brought an umbrella. Marva always walked with an umbrella. Soon there was a lot going on, people were bustling in and around the shops—the little shops and the department stores with big windows. I wandered into Stephen’s, and up the steps to the ladies’ department where I found a pink dress with a petticoat. I went to a mirror and held it up. A shop assistant watched me like I had crawled out of a drain so I didn’t try it on.
In Charlotte Street, loud calypso music was pouring out of a bar on the corner called The Black Hat. There were a lot of white people around. I saw a blond woman with pointed shoes and pointed breasts in a lime green dress. She was holding the hands of two small blond children. They were walking into a travel agency, Eastern Credit Union Travel, and above it was a billboard with an enormous wh
ite airplane: BOAC: LONDON! NEW YORK! WE’LL TAKE YOU THERE! I couldn’t imagine picking somewhere and flying there just like that.
But it wasn’t all like this: outside the general post office, a woman was squatting, and where her hands should have been there were strips of pale flesh like roots from a tree sprouting from her wrists, trailing on the dirty ground. She raised her arms and these thick tendrils of skin hung in the air. They made me think of the mangrove swamps near Black Rock. She was sitting on newspaper and there was a big yellow stain on one side that I knew was her urine. She wasn’t old and she wasn’t young. She looked at me in a strange way, and I realized she wanted money. People were going in and out of the post office as if she wasn’t there.
“Miss, give me a little something. Look meh hands. I beg you. God will bless you.” Her voice was small and crackly. “Everybody need a blessing.”
“I don’t have any money,” I said.
The telegram I mailed to Aunt Tassi in Black Rock read: TO INFORM YOU THAT I’M WELL AND SAFE. I’M NOT COMING BACK. CELIA.
TWELVE
THOSE FIRST SIX MONTHS WORKING IN THE RODRIGUEZ household were the happiest I had known. Dr. Emmanuel Rodriguez said I carried out my chores and responsibilities with “efficiency and maturity.” I didn’t mind working hard; it stopped me from thinking about things. At the end of each day I was tired and used up and ready to sleep. When anyone asked me to do anything I said, yes sir, or yes madam, nothing was too much trouble. I worked every weekend. There was nowhere else I wanted to go, but more than that, I was glad of the extra money, every cent of which I saved in an old milk tin under my bed.