There Are No Elders

by Clarke, Austin; Rooke, Leon;

  It was late now. Still, only half of her body was tired. Fatigue did not touch her mind. She thought of things to do the next day at work; she thought of plans for the transformation of her bungalow; she thought of plans, not really plans but plottings, to get her children back with her; and she thought of the new richer life she would lead, as a result of this rebirth.

  The movie on television was in black and white. There were women in long dresses that reached to the floor. And men were wearing formal clothes, with stiff collars cutting into their necks, just below their chins. Their necks were red, though she could not see that colour; she had seen such men during her holidays in Florida, when they spoke to her. And there were servants coming and going. She had spoken to women like them at the bus stop. She could picture herself in that grand living room. The amount of drink being served made her comfortable. It was her place. She was born to be like this.

  Five months’ pregnant with her first daughter, he’d been kind and attentive. He’d sat with her on the hospital room floor where she and six other mothers-to-be were on mats, and one day a week they’d pretended that they were giving birth. He would breathe with her, rub her belly, and have an erection, impatient to take her back home to jump on her belly, sometimes forgetting that his seed was buried already inside it.

  And he was in the room when the pains really started. And he held her hand when they increased. And when his first daughter was born, he saw it all, and did not leave the room until he had to. That night he called her mother and her father, her sister and brothers, and distributed expensive cigars. And then he went home.

  He was home for fifteen minutes before the woman arrived. She parked her car in their garage. She went through the front door, straight to the bedroom. The pink baby booties, bonnets, sweaters, nightgowns and suits lay undisturbed at the foot of the bed, which his wife had made minutes before he had driven her to the hospital. And the infant’s garments remained undisturbed, by some miracle, while he “fucked the living daylights outta her,” which is how he put it to his friend at the desk next to his the following morning, holding open the almost empty box of Tueros cigars, celebrating his firstborn child.

  She heard about this years later from her husband’s friend when they were no longer friends, when the friend wanted to assure her that that friendship had ended, after he made a pass at her, as he told her what a bastard her husband was, had been, and would always be. It was the same man she had gone to on that might when she had left the nine-year-old in the babysitting hands of her older sister.

  She gets up, tired and sore, and she takes up the telephone.

  “How are you?” It is her mother she is calling. “I haven’t spoken to you in a long time,” she says. And she has to repeat her words, because her mother cannot hear them distinctly.

  “You been drinking, darling? I know what you’re going through. And a glass does help. I won’t like to know you’re overdoing it, though. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  “You know, darling, when you were a little girl, and you came home from school and I would ask you how school was, you always said, ‘Fine,’ just like you’re saying now. Everything I asked you about, you always said, ‘I’m fine.’ I knew things weren’t fine. Because things’re never fine, all the time.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She could not remember if she had asked her mother to come over. She could not remember when it was that she had made the suggestion, if in fact, she had.

  She went into the bedroom and took the plastic vial from the medicine cupboard. She did not have to look at the writing on the bottle. And she did not have to spend any time selecting this bottle from all the others there: aspirin, vitamins and pills prescribed months ago for other medical ailments, which she never completed taking according to the doctor’s orders.

  She took a few, put them into her mouth, and took a sip of her brandy. She passed a brush through her hair. And she examined her face in the small looking-glass in the bathroom. She cleansed her face with Noxema cream, applied make-up and even brushed one of the four colours from the Cover Girl case across her cheeks.

  It was past midnight. She’d made her face pretty. She’d made her appearance appealing. And she did this even though it was only her mother coming over to see how she is. And she knew that her mother would be gone in fifteen minutes, for it is so late; and there is really no need to fix herself to meet her mother. She is her mother. And mothers understand that love and appreciation are not measure in this kind of preparation.

  She raised her skirt, hooked her fingers into the elastic at her waist and lowered her pantihose. She chose a fresh pair. The pills started to make her feel relaxed. She will sleep tonight. The pills and her martinis. And she will usher her mother out, nicely, after a few minutes. Before she put her panties on, she took her silk dressing gown from the nail behind the door of her bedroom. It was rich in colour, a pattern of dragons and beasts that could be from the sea or the vast land of China. It was warm on her soft beautiful body, no longer old and tired, as it was a few minutes ago when she rose from the couch. She drew the skin-coloured silk underwear over her legs, and she felt a slight irritation. A piece of paper. And she pulled them down, and a page from her personalized stationery, folded into the size of a large postage stamp, fell out.

  She unfolded it, passed her eyes over the uneven letters, in capitals, the uneven pencil strokes telling her, “We are not coming back coz you send us away.” when the doorbell rang. She jumped. She wondered who would call at this hour? She wondered if it was her husband. She wondered if it was the man, her husband’s friend. She wondered if it was her children. She had forgotten she had spoken with her mother ten minutes ago.

  She crept to the door, looking through the hole and saw the disproportioned face of the woman standing on the other side. She looked old, and ugly from the magnification, and frightening. But it was the eyes, her mother’s eyes, that told her she was safe. She was safe again, safe always when she was with her mother. She was safe in all the those years of her bad marriage whenever her mother called, or came over, and sat with her, holding her face in her lap and sometimes, her mother would have her lean her head against her shoulder and pass her hand over her forehead, as if she knew she had a headache.

  The note was still in her hand when she opened the door, taking the chain, pulling back the bolt, unlocking the deadbolt.

  “What have you got there, dear?”

  She showed it to her. “My dear! Leah wrote this?”

  She did not answer. Her body was weak, too weak from the exertion of words and explanation. And water had already come eyes.

  “The little….”

  Her mother did not complete her sentiment. There was no need to.

  “Where’re you going this hour?”

  She had noticed how properly her daughter was dressed, hair in place, every strand of her dark brown hair; and the make-up and eyeshadow; and she mistook the silk housecoat for a cocktail dress.

  “You young people wear such crazy styles, child, I thought you were on your way out! What would make Leah write a thing like this?”

  “You want a drink, mom? I only got gin.”

  “Your father would think I was out to meet a man, at my age!” And she laughed her full-throated laugh. And her daughter laughed too. And was happy for the duration of that laughter.

  “Oh, mom!” she said. “Oh, mom!”

  And then tears engulfed her, and washed over her, and gave her the feeling of holiness that she had known in her childhood years of accepting the ritual of being a young Christian-minded child. She knew that powerful feeling that swept over her when she attended Mass, like the warm water of the sea when she and her mother went on their holidays. And she could feel the spirit she knew was inside her body when she knelt and said her personal prayers, after the priest had given the Benediction.

  “Oh, mom!”

  “What’re you doing to yourself, eh, child?”
r />   “Oh, mom!” She reached for the snifter.

  “Why don’t you put an end to this, dear?”

  “Oh, mom!” She said in the whisper she’d used when she said she intended to enter the nunnery. “Have I disappointed you, mom?”

  “You are my daughter,” she said. And drew her body closer, and rested her head on her shoulder. “You smell good. What is it?”

  “I’m using Chanel now, mom.”

  “That’s a good scent.”

  “Oh, mom!”

  “Now, first thing in the morning,” her mother began, passing her hand with the three gold rings on the wedding finger over her daughter’s forehead, and then along her neck, “first thing in the morning, you and me, we’re going to see somebody for you to talk to.” And she could smell the scent, and the shampoo her daughter had used. And she could feel the muscle on the left side of her neck. And she could feel the softness of the silk of her house-coat.

  The time passed slowly. Her mother sat silently and paid no attention to the movie on television. Soon there was snow on the screen. All she could hear was the taking in and letting out of breath from her daughter’s warm body and the sudden, short startled moving of the body. Once, instead of a shudder, there was a sigh. She went back over the years of struggle with the six children she’d borne the man she loved, and still loved; how she’d cut and contrived and got them all through high school, and all but one in college and university; attending graduations and birthday parties, and weddings and christenings.

  And you were always my favourite, out of all the children I bore, you were always my star, and I can still remember the nights I stayed up with you, seeing you through measles, mumps, cutting your teeth, toothache, earache, everything, until you met that man you married and threw away your life, you the star, my favourite out of all the children I carried in my womb.

  And time passed without her notice, for she did not know the body was no longer so warm, and she thought of raising the thermometer, these bungalows where the workmen worked so fast and didn’t know one thing about insulation. Time, passing without sound. And there is no longer the spasm that tells of life, and there is no longer the soft whisper of sleep.

  It is quiet. And this quiet is felt not in the motionless sleeping body she is holding, not from anything inside this house, but through the sound of the leaves and a branch rubbing against the house. And it becomes cold. Her own body is cold and she draws her daughter closer still to her body.

  In all the time, and with all these children, all of them out of my womb, you, you Claudette were always my star, and my joy. Out of all of them, I loved you the most. All these years, all these years.

  But this time, it is different. The weight is lighter, but the burden is heavier. Her right shoulder is numb, bearing this sleep that is like a solution. First thing in the morning, I will take you to somebody to talk to you.

  It is still. It has been like this for awhile now, and still she continues to pass her hand with her wedding rings on it over and over her daughter’s forehead that smells so well of Chanel. And her hand, like her shoulder, loses its life and feel, the circulation gone out of it, until she opens her eyes. And looks. And sees the beautiful tranquil face. “Sleep. Sleep, my darling.”

  Her face is soft and relaxed. There is a smile across her lips. Her lips, the smear of the lipstick. The mascara. Her face is soft and relaxed; and the beauty that defines it is young and innocent.

  “Sleep.”

  The Cradle Will Fall

  We were sitting on the sand. The sand was the same colour as the shell of the conch. The conch was empty, dead and old. And it had been left in the sea, for days, perhaps months. It could have been years. Sometimes when we were at home, a few hundred yards from the beach where our fathers and uncles had sat years before us, an uncle had been dragged up filled with water, drowned and blue, and someone would put this same conch shell to his lips, and blow a signal, a tune, a warning of things to come. We were sitting on the sand and the sun was going behind the water far out, beyond the power of our eyes to focus; and it was still hot, and the water was washing in, lazily and without waves; washing our bodies.

  Out bathing pants, as we called them, were made of khaki. They were the pants we’d worn to high school. Now, they were tattered. They were torn in many places in the shape of an L. They were cut down, and they reached almost to the knee. When they were soaked in salt, they became heavy, and stuck to our bodies.

  We were sitting on the sand. The water mixed with sand made the sand the same consistency as the Cream of Wheat porridge our mothers made us eat for strength, to make us men.

  John had stepped on a cobbler, and the cobbler, John said, was angry at him. It broke off about ten black needles into his foot. The ten needles were visible. Just the tops. I could see them clearly against the dark pink of his sole. All ten were in the heel of his left foot. He had told me that he was “double-jointed.” He’d shown me how double-jointed he was. The evening before, while sitting on the sand, he had grabbed his right leg with his right hand, and put it over his head. I had closed my eyes, expecting to hear his joints break. But nothing happened. All I could hear when he did this trick was water lapping against the pink shell of the conch. And then he did the same thing with his left leg. I closed my eyes again. And when I opened them, I thought John had turned into a soldier crab. His joints did not break. I knew then that he was “double-jointed.” And I told him that his limbs were made out of rubber.

  “Rubber?” he asked me. “Like the rubber of our inner tube?”

  The inner tube, patched in many different colours, was just then drifting out to sea. The tide had come in, and a wave falling back over itself had dragged it, like a thief, out of our reach. John was able to swim, but the ten black points in his pink heel were stinging him. He had wanted to teach me to swim, but he had forgotten. And anyway, the sea was always too rough.

  “The tube! Man, look the tube!”

  And I got up, and ran towards the water. And stopped. And thought of the water coming up to my shoulders, and then my head, and then my mouth. And I saw again, as if it were happening in front of me, my uncle’s bloated body, filled with sea water and with some moss in his mouth, heavy and dead, while the other fishermen dragged him the same way they had dragged a shark up the beach, along the sand, leaving the trail of body and legs over the sand the colour of the shell of the conch. That Sunday afternoon, someone blew the conch shell too.

  “The blasted tube, man!” John was hopping on one leg, waving his hands and pointing. “Swim, man! Swim out and save the blasted tube!”

  I remembered the “moses” my uncle used to push into the sea, and guide into the deeper water to reach his anchored fishing boat; and I remembered how he would hop into it, and before I could blink my eyes twice, in the twinkling of an eye, as my mother would say, the “moses” would disappear amongst the climbing waves, higher than any hill in Barbados, and then I would hold my breath, and when I released it, the “moses” would be like a hat thrown into the sea, or a leaf, dancing in a frolic upon the steadying waves. Then, he would reach the fishing boat, Galilee. He was a deacon in The Church of the Nazarene, when he was not catching jacks and sprats, flying fish and sharks, dolphins and congo-eels. He never ventured into the sea on Sundays except early Sunday morning, to fetch back fish-pots from the rewarding sea, pots filled with after-morning-church dinner of barbaras, cavallies, ning-nings, sea-eggs when the season was right – the name of the month ending in “er”; and once, to our religious joy, a lobster. It weighed twenty pounds, one ounce.

  “A twenty-pound one-ounce lobster, man?” my aunt had said, hefting the thing in her left hand, with a stick in her right, ready to strike it dead as it wriggled big and little claws close to her face. “Man, whoever hear of a lobster that weigh twenty-pounds, one ounce? You not ’fraid God strike you dead? And on a Sunday morning, to-boot?”

  “Well, not that in a real sense I mean that this lobster tipped the scales at
twenty pounds, avoirdupois, plus one ounce,” he said, relishing his use of big words. He had no scale, and never relied on them; but weighed everything, fish, potatoes and mangoes by hand, by hefting them. “When I say it tipping the scales at twenty pounds, one ounce, assuming I did-have a blasted pair o’ scales, it is only a way of speaking, girl. Only a way of speaking!”

  It was however just two weeks after that Sunday, that they brought him back, as if he were a shark he himself had caught, out in the darkness, putting an end to his fishing on the Sabbath, as he called Sundays, although he did not know what it meant.

  “Swim out! Swim out!”

  John’s voice rang in my ears, but I was seeing the “moses” drifting in the trough of waves; then the Galilee, then the darkness, then the blowing of the conch shell that killed the smaller signals from the doves of the wood, and then the bruised sand over which they dragged his body, bloated by water, bloated more than my teacher had told me was the proportion in a human carcass, and then the darkness.

  “Swim out! Swim out!”

  I stood my ground. I saw the black tube do the same dance as the “moses.” I saw it disappear. I saw it reappear. I saw it get small and smaller, smaller still, until it was the same size, the same black mark as the cobblers in the pink skin of John’s heel. That was the last I saw of the tube. That was the last time I remember sitting on the sand with John. That was the last time before I left the island, and John soon behind me, when we did almost everything together; or had it done to us; birth, baptism, christening and confirmation; leaving elementary school for Combermere School for Boys, a second-grade school that trained senior civil servants; joining the choir of St. Michael’s Cathedral where we learned to learn Roman numerals before we could follow the announcement of Psalms at matins; scouts, cadets, Harrison College, a first-grade school for boys and for turning us into barristers-at-law; and University. America for me. Somewhere else, for John.