Lime Tree Can't Bear Orange

by Amanda Smyth

  I thought how hard this must have been for the twins.

  I said, “He never did anything like that with you?”

  “No, never. He was always good to us. He tried to be a daddy, you know.”

  Then Vera got up and started to wipe the table. She didn’t ask if Roman had ever done anything to me. I was glad. There would be time to tell Aunt Tassi if I wanted to. I wasn’t sure what good it would do now. Aunt Tassi was sad enough as things were. I always imagined that I would tell her, just so that she knew why I had left Black Rock. But even that didn’t seem to matter anymore. There were other things to think about.

  I DIDN’T KNOW that Aunt Tassi had secrets of her own.

  “Celia,” she called, from her room, around three-thirty. “You want to take a walk with me to the river? It’s a long time since I went there.”

  “Sure,” I said, surprised. I put on my slippers and tied up my hair.

  “There are some things we need to talk about.”

  THE SUN WAS starting to go down, and the golden light of late afternoon made everything look kinder and softer; our feet moved together in the same, slow, left-right way. I could hear the swish of my aunt’s dress, and I could also hear a corn bird singing somewhere nearby.

  Aunt Tassi said, “You know when you were a little girl, you were always asking questions. I used to say, Where did this curious child come from? What was my mother’s hair like, what color were her eyes. And when I said black, you’d say, What kind of black? Black like wood or black like bees? Just when I thought you were finished, it would start again.”

  “Maybe I felt like I never got a proper answer.”

  “That might be true. It wasn’t easy answering you.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  She smiled in a strange way. “Let’s sit down here on these stones.”

  The stones were warm from the sun. There was a dragonfly hovering above the water. I saw another and another. We sat for a few moments in silence. The water was clear and I could see dark rocks gleaming underneath. It was all familiar, as if I had never left.

  Then Aunt Tassi said, “I’ve something to tell you, Celia. It’s very hard to say. So please forgive me if I don’t say it right.”

  Something fluttered in my stomach.

  “When you said you were coming, I thought it was a sign.”

  “A sign of what?”

  “A sign that you should know.”

  Aunt Tassi watched me closely.

  “How would you feel if I told you that Aunt Sula was your mother?”

  “Aunt Sula?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  I half expected her to break into a smile as if she was joking. But she didn’t.

  “Aunt Sula was my mother?”

  Again, she told me, “Yes.”

  I stared at her. I felt as if I was in a dream.

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “Yes, Celia.” Aunt Tassi’s eyes were suddenly watery, sad.

  “You tell me this now; Aunt Sula was my mother?”

  “Aunt Sula was your mother.”

  Everything was starting to whirr around and I was glad to be sitting down, otherwise I might have fallen into the river just as I did when I was a child.

  “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “She wanted to tell you when you first start going to Tamana. But then she got so sick. What was the point in telling you when she could die. You were used to living without a mother.”

  “But I saw her before she was sick.”

  “Sula was sick for a long time.”

  I put my hands up to my face.

  “Celia, she wanted you to be happy. It would have turned your world upside down.”

  “What difference would it have made, now or then?”

  Tears stung my eyes.

  “What about Grace?”

  “Yes, she died. She died of TB the day after you were born.”

  “And so you said she was my mother?”

  “For Sula it felt like the right thing to do.”

  “The right thing or the convenient thing?”

  Aunt Tassi shook her head.

  “What about you?”

  She turned up her hands. “What could I do?” Aunt Tassi looked away at the side of the bank where the grass grew tall. After a few moments, I saw her expression change. I knew there was something else.

  “It was more complicated than that. She couldn’t keep you with her at Tamana because of your father.”

  “My father?”

  She looked at me steadily. “Joseph Carr Brown.”

  As if he was right there, I saw Joseph Carr Brown step in front of me. I saw his hat, his long face, his dark blue eyes.

  I stared at my aunt as if she was a jumbie.

  She nodded.

  “Sula was in love with him. They were in love.”

  I saw them sitting together on Aunt Sula’s porch, playing cards, drinking tea.

  “I don’t know if she ever told him about you. He might have guessed in his own way.” Then Aunt Tassi said, “She loved you very much.”

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. There was only the sound of the water, the breeze in the dry leaves.

  “I’m sorry, Celia, this isn’t easy for you. It was never going to be easy.”

  “How long?”

  Aunt Tassi looked confused.

  “How long was she with him?”

  “More than ten years.” This was a shock. I expected her to say a year, maybe less. Ten years was a long, long time.

  “It started a few months after she went to work there as a servant. She didn’t want to have an affair, but she didn’t want to come back here. So she stayed. At that time there weren’t so many choices.”

  “But what about his wife?”

  “They say she knew. He’d had affairs before Sula; he always liked women, but he’d never really cared for the others in the same way. Sula was different. As long as he didn’t shame his wife with an outside child, Mrs. Carr Brown turned a blind eye. It’s not unusual. But then Sula got pregnant. She told him she was coming here for a while to take care of Grace, who was very sick. He never had any reason to think otherwise. She stayed here for six months.”

  I took a deep breath in. This was all too much. I felt as if I was about to burst.

  Aunt Tassi got up and held out her hand. “Come, child.”

  I could never, ever have imagined this. I let Aunt Tassi put her arms around me. She patted my back.

  AT THE HOUSE, Violet and Vera were quiet. They left me alone in my old room. I sat on the bed and stared out the window at the yard. I don’t know how long I sat there. Then I lay down and fixed my eyes on the ceiling. It was as if I had been put on a different world, or had my world tipped upside down.

  I ran through my days at Tamana, looking for signs I had missed; the afternoon tea, the familiarity, the tenderness between Aunt Sula and Joseph Carr Brown. Did he know? And if he did know, why didn’t he say anything? How did Aunt Sula keep it to herself? If I’d known my life would have been completely different. If I’d known I would have left Black Rock and gone to Tamana, I would have felt differently about everything—my home, myself, my life. I thought about Mrs. Carr Brown and how she had taken such a dislike to me.

  THAT NIGHT, AUNT Tassi came and sat on the side of my bed. Her shoulders drooped as if the world was on them.

  “I always used to say to Sula, Lies make more lies. And it’s true. The more you go away from the truth, the harder it is to come back.”

  I asked if Roman knew and she said no.

  “Sula was so proud of you.”

  “She had no right to be proud,” I said, suddenly angry. “It’s easy to make a baby.”

  Aunt Tassi looked at me with a kind of pity; she tucked my hair behind my ear.

  I felt tears run down my cheeks.

  FOR THE NEXT few days, I stayed around the house. Aunt Tassi was never far away. She would do her best to answer all my questions, she
said. She cooked my favorite meals, and I was surprised to find myself eating. She cared for me as she might care for somebody who is unwell. I had never known her quite like this.

  She found some old photographs of her with Sula and Grace. I had not seen them before. One of them was taken right there on the beach in Black Rock. I looked hard at Sula and, yes, I thought I saw myself there. I asked if she had any photographs of Joseph Carr Brown. There was one of him standing on the top of the cocoa shed. It was taken from a long way back. It reminded me of when I saw him at the estate the first time I visited Aunt Sula. My mother.

  “Why Southampton?” I asked.

  “It was just a place I knew about. I had a postcard from someone who went there. Father Carmichael, you remember.”

  “DID SHE HAVE me in Trinidad?”

  “No, she came to Tobago just when the baby started to show, so that no one would know.”

  I put my hands on my small round belly.

  “Were you there when I was born?”

  “Oh yes. Sula laughed and cried at the same time; for the first time in her life, she said she was happy. She said, ‘What a beautiful child I have.’ And she cried the whole way back to Trinidad. It was the biggest mistake she ever made. She told me so when she came to visit. She said she should have kept you; you were more important than anything. She’d listened to her head instead of her heart.”

  Aunt Tassi smiled. “Do you remember when she came, and you found the manicou in the road?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and Roman threw a plate at you.”

  “Roman threw a plate at me,” she said, her voice suddenly flat.

  ONE DAY, IN the kitchen, I asked Aunt Tassi, “Why did you go along with it?”

  Aunt Tassi put down the yam she was peeling. “By then I’d met my husband, Violet and Vera’s father. I wasn’t going anywhere. She always sent money to pay for things for you.”

  I remembered the parcels that arrived every month.

  “And you were a beautiful child, how could I have said no. Not always an easy child,” she said, and laughed. “But beautiful.”

  I KEPT THINKING of Joseph Carr Brown and his daughters. I thought how lucky they were to have him as a father; to have known him as a father.

  “Maybe I’ll go back to Tamana before too long and speak with him.”

  Aunt Tassi said, “Now Sula’s gone, what harm can be done?”

  “He might not believe me.”

  “Why wouldn’t he? At times, you remind me so much of Sula.” Aunt Tassi’s eyes welled with tears. “Lime tree can’t bear orange, Celia.”

  I THOUGHT OF how quickly I’d settled into life in Tamana; the “easy way” I’d had with the horses. Was I like my father in this way? I remembered when my mother told me I was “brave like Joseph Carr Brown.”

  ONCE THE SHOCK had gone, I started to feel differently about things. When I thought about Aunt Sula, and how she had passed away without telling me, I felt angry and then very sad. I kept thinking of her face, that last day, when we stood at the top of the steps and looked out at her little yard. I tried to imagine them together, my mother and father. And in some strange way that I didn’t quite understand, their relationship made perfect sense.

  Knowing my father was in Trinidad and I didn’t have to go all the way to England to find him was, in some ways, a relief. But how would he feel about me? Would he see me as his daughter? Would I remind him too much of Sula? Would he want to help me? He would expect me to ask him for money. This, I told myself, I would never do.

  And in all this, I thought about my own life. I felt differently about the baby I was carrying. It seemed clear to me that I was following my mother’s path. If my mother had got rid of me, I would never have known life. I would keep my baby. For now, Dr. Emmanuel Rodriguez did not have to know my decision. Of course, soon I would have to tell Aunt Tassi.

  BLACK ROCK VILLAGE had not changed. St. Mary’s school was still there, although the outside had been freshly painted a light shade of green. When I passed one afternoon, I glimpsed Miss McCartney through the window standing at the front of the classroom. She looked exactly the same: her red hair pinned up, wearing a long skirt and blouse. I decided that I would visit her after class one day. I would tell her about my life and what had happened since I had seen her last. I hoped she wouldn’t be too disappointed. I wanted to ask her: Can you really be anything you want to be?

  I walked up the main road and looked in at the church. I had always liked the church, the plain white walls, and the wooden altar. I sat for a moment. I closed my eyes. I thought about my mother, and wondered if she could see me. I clearly remembered her face, her round cheeks, her slightly slanted eyes.

  At the small post office, I checked to see if there was any mail. I stopped in at Jimmy’s bar, and then I went over to Uncle C’s. Apart from the old barman, there was no one there. The place smelled of cigarettes and stale beer. The barman asked if I was looking for someone. “Roman Bartholomew’s ghost,” I said, and half smiled. He looked surprised. But then he waved his hand as if shooing away a fly, “Roman went where he belong—to hell.”

  For some reason, I started up Stony Hill, and got as far as old Edmond Diaz’s house. I could see the dark path that led to Mrs. Jeremiah’s; it was thick with mahogany leaves. It was all there, just as I remembered it. I wondered where Mrs. Jeremiah was; I hoped she was at peace.

  I walked home along Courland Bay. I couldn’t see any fishermen. There were pelicans diving into the sea, rising up, throats like buckets and filled with fish. The waves were bigger at this time of year, sloshing over the black rock. As I walked farther around the other side, the beach became narrow. There were little chunks of broken coral and shell, and pieces of driftwood scattered. The wood was soft to touch. I walked as far as the dark, tangled mangrove, alive with large blue crabs; it no longer frightened me.

  JOAN MAINGOT LIVED in a small house on a piece of land behind her mother’s.

  “Celia?” she said, screwing up her eyes as if she hardly recognized me.

  “Yes, Joan,” I said, “remember me?”

  And I laughed and then she laughed, too, and welcomed me into her home. She handed me her baby. His name was Wilfred, after her father.

  “You know how we still miss Daddy? Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him.”

  Little Wilfred smelled of soap and powder; his skin was soft like a new plum. I looked into his dark wet eyes.

  “Oh good,” she said. “He’s been bawling all afternoon; he must like you.”

  Joan looked a little older, and she had put on weight. She showed me around. I could tell that she was proud, especially when she took me into the bedroom she shared with her husband. On the wall, there was a photograph of their wedding. Joan looked elegant in a long white lacy dress. I knew his face, but I couldn’t remember his name. “I don’t know how long you’re here, but maybe you’ll meet him,” she said, beaming. “He’s away in British Guiana panning for gold.”

  I carried baby Wilfred across the grass to Mrs. Maingot’s house, where Aunt Tassi was waiting. “Look at you,” she said, and lifted him into her arms. There was the spiky plant with eggs, and beside it another smaller plant with shorter spikes. “Just now you’ll have to watch him with these plants,” Aunt Tassi warned, as she made her way up the steps.

  WE SAT ON the porch and Mrs. Maingot brought out a tray with tea. There were sweet buns and coconut cake from the bakery in Buccoo.

  “Celia looks so glamorous,” Joan said, and she leaned in to look at the earrings Dr. Emmanuel Rodriguez had given me. She asked about my plans.

  “I’m not sure just yet.”

  “You were always talking about going to England.”

  “Yes,” I said, and looked at Aunt Tassi.

  Then Mrs. Maingot said, “Remember how we used to say what a strange girl Celia was?”

  “She turned out fine in the end,” Aunt Tassi said. My heart felt full and warm.

  DURING THE DAY, Vera and V
iolet worked at the Blue Range Hotel, but they were back in the evenings. They seemed happy enough: sewing, talking, listening to the radio they had saved up and bought between them.

  One night, by candlelight, I taught them how to play hearts. They soon caught on. When she saw me expertly shuffling the pack, Aunt Tassi’s eyes opened wide.

  “Where you learned to do that?”

  I told her, “My father showed me. In Sula’s gambling parlor.” And we all looked at one another.

  IN ALL THIS time, I knew that my baby was growing. Soon it would start to show through my dresses; they were already feeling tight. I’d heard that this is how it happens, one minute you look the same, and the next you are big as a house and the whole world knows. I wanted to tell Aunt Tassi. But I also wanted things to settle, at least for a few more days.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THE BANGING CAME AT ABOUT SIX-THIRTY. THE COCK had just started crowing. I heard one of the girls get up, and then I heard her shout, “Who you want? You come to the wrong house.” I leapt out of bed, pulled on my dress, and ran to the door. William was on the steps, his face hot, wearing an old shirt and trousers and sandals. I said, “William, why you didn’t tell me you were coming?” Aunt Tassi was behind me, “Who it is, Celia? You know this man?” “Yes,” I said, “I know him.”

  After a few minutes of introductions, where I explained that William was my good friend from Port of Spain, and that he had just arrived in Tobago, everybody calmed down. The girls went inside to dress, Aunt Tassi went to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee; I took William onto the veranda.

  At first, I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “How was the crossing?”

  “Okay,” he said, but I could see that he was fraught, like somebody who has been without sleep; there was a hint of wildness in his eyes.

  “What’s going on? There’s something.”