—Your mother Gita Bhagwandhat
It was Labor Day. The summer was gone.
Sitting on the edge of the low iron bed, in his illegal conversion in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, shirtless and shoeless, dressed in a pair of pea green boxers, Ian looked up from his mother’s spidery script into the sheet of silver sky that filled the windows like wrinkled foil. He withstood the bite of the glare, vowing not to cry even as the tension in his head began to buckle his face, deforming it like a hand squeezing water from a sponge.
On the kitchen counter at the far end of the loft, beyond the barber chairs and low glass table that marked the den, and the scuffed floorboards beneath the basketball hoop, the West Indian Day parade—a lava flow of rum-loosened revelers in fringes, sequins, and feathers—hissed across the TV screen like the beckoning smile of a femme fatale.
My life has turned to shit, he thought as he placed the letter on the dresser and looked out the window for Margaret. He had never in his life felt so vulnerable. For he’d always depended on the strength of others. Since the argument at the gallery three months ago, he’d withdrawn from Sylvia, and she hadn’t tried to reconnect; Margaret now belonged to Phil; and he hadn’t heard from Fire since the argument about the watch. Every time he spoke to Claire he felt like confessing his arrangement with Lewis. So he’d begun to avoid her as well.
But even with all these people out of his life, he thought, looking down the street toward the entrance of the sprawling brick-and-concrete complex, he still didn’t want to see his mother, whom he resented for reasons he’d long recognized without really understanding. He loathed Miss Gita because she was East Indian. A coolie. A despised and stereotyped minority in an overwhelmingly black country. Coolie. The word seemed to knock the wind out of him. He leaned against the window ledge, which was wide and trimmed in mauve. The walls were a powder blue and hung with the work of friends, including, over the bed, a Jean-Michel Basquiat portrait of him as a king, in acrylic on hardboard.
In his head he heard the taunts. Coolie baboo shit pon hot callaloo. Coolie gyal ave white liver. Coolie can tief milk outta coffee. Sixteen coolie weigh one pound. Coolie cyaah dance. Coolie batty flat. Coolie drink dem own piss when dem thirsty.
Coolie. It was worse than nigger. Because even a nigger could call an Indian “coolie” and get away with it. But the black people don’t see it that way. They expect you to forget who you are. It’s okay to celebrate Diwali because they like to come and eat the food, the curry this and the curry that, and they like to watch you jig to the tabla drum because coolie cyaah dance and coolie gyal wi gi weh pussy once dem get excited.
Coolie gyal have white liver. Coolie gyal cyaah satisfy nuh matter how hard yuh fuck dem. Coolie gyal mighta likkle but dem big underneat. His own friends used to say these things. Like the nigger in America, the coolie in Jamaica is invisible.
So knowing this, Mama, he thought, as his shadow stained the wall, why you had six children for six different men? Why you never married even one o’ dem? Everyone—you included—likes to emphasize that I’m your only son, as if it’s the same thing as being your only child. What about your daughters? My sisters? Wha’appen to dem? Dem cyaah help you?
Now that you old everyone sorry for you. But I remember you when you was young and the cyaar man-dem used to draw up a de gate and everybody used to look and point behind your back when you walk past the standpipe in your tight-up dress—which you still used to wear when your ass and your belly start exchanging places.
And being the youngest—remember, you had me at forty-five—I grew up hearing that my sisters, most of whom had left the house by then, was just like you: some white-liver, fucky-fucky coolie gyal. Which is why I used to spend so much time with Fire’s old man although him was a faggot. But a faggot better than a whore. Faggots fuck a lot but at least they doan breed.
Mama, you doan know how it feel to walk past a bar and hear a man bawl out, “Bwai, call me ‘Mister’ cause ah coulda be yuh faada.”
Now you talking about Jesus and Jerusalem. It easy to turn Christian, eeh? Now that you old and nobody doan want you. Why now, Mama, and not then?
He heard Margaret’s key in the front door. He checked his TAG. It was four-fifteen. She’d called a half hour before to say she was leaving. In his mind he followed her from her house to his.
She lived about six blocks away, on South Elliot Avenue, but the six blocks could have easily been sixty miles. Fort Greene Park, a rolling green with tennis courts and a jogging trail, sits between DeKalb and Myrtle Avenues, not so much as a barrier but as a sieve, leaching the rehabbed brownstones and shade trees from the streets that enter it from the south. From DeKalb south to Atlantic, Fort Greene is a historic district of boutiques and cafés. It’s the manger of African America’s future—the home of acclaimed and emerging figures in music, fine art, and literature. Filmmakers. Architects. Choreographers. And fast-moving corporate executives. Beyond the park, though, is Myrtle Avenue, and the Fort Greene projects, acres of low-rise boxes like a jumbo pack of roach motels; and incorporated storefront Pentecostal churches; and bulletproof Chinese take-out joints; and liquor stores that cash welfare checks; and teenage boys who will enter manhood with the burden of children; and young girls pushing strollers when they should be pushing for a promotion.
The Navy Yard, where Ian was waiting, was north of Myrtle,north of the elevated BQE, north of the Brooklyn Correctional Facility, on the northern edge of Fort Greene, on the southern bank of the East River.
The Navy Yard, which was now an asbestos-ridden commercial park, did not allow tenants to live there. But Ian had converted some space into a residence. He needed somewhere to live. And the rent was cheap.
He showed Margaret the letter when she arrived. She sat on the bed. Her hair was pulled away from her face and tied in a knot above her head, a style that drew attention to her eyes. They were dark with thick lashes whose shadows gave the effect of kohl. She was wearing a velvet shirt that he’d given to Phil. She hadn’t wanted it when it was his, Ian noted. Brown didn’t suit her, she’d said.
The fuck is wrong with her? Wha she a-try say? This thing with Phil is serious? He laughed inside. She’d even tried to cut him off—had said she’d never sleep with him again. But here she was, only weeks beyond her declaration, ready to let off, because Phil didn’t know how to slap her despite being taught by the master.
He went to the fridge for a Guinness, asked Margaret what she wanted. She said, without looking up, red wine.
Despite all the mix-up, Ian liked having Phil around. He was jovial and domestic. He cooked and cleaned and washed. Went shopping and ran errands. Without any sort of prompting. He had a nice spirit. And hearing him practice on his trumpet from dawn till noon was indulging in aural sex.
He also liked having Phil around because he gave him access to Margaret. Because of Phil’s presence, Margaret visited often, and had even spent a few nights.
Ian pretended to be unaffected by her visits, and he kept out of her way under the guise of giving her some privacy with Phil, although she didn’t seem to cherish it. As a matter of fact she tried to outrage him by being openly sexual with Phil.
So Ian was faced with a choice between two hurts—the hurt of seeing Margaret with Phil, and the hurt of losing touch with her altogether. Through Phil, he learned about the goings-on in her life—what she ate, where she went, how she was feeling. And gleaning this information was easy because Phil spoke about Margaret constantly. He adored her.
About a month ago, Phil had made an announcement. He said it very simply: “I’m thinking about living with Margaret.” He and Ian were sitting next to each other on the staircase having dinner.
“Why? What appen?” Ian said. “You tink I runnin y’out? Stay as long as you want, man.”
“It’s not that you’re making me uncomfortable or anything,” Phil replied. “It’s just that I’m thinking of staying in America for a while and I guess I’d need my own place.”
; Ian heaved a sigh and swallowed. “I mean if you get the Philharmonic gig then you’ll be over here for a while, but you can stay here for as long as you need, man,” he said, worried about the prospect of losing touch with Margaret.
“I’ve kinda soured on the Philharmonic, Ian,” Phil replied laconically.
“What you mean?”
“I’m not sure if my future is in classical music. Margaret’s been suggesting that I start thinking about jazz. She could do things for me, she says … open doors … She knows a lot of people, being at the station and all.”
“Me never know you like jazz all dat much, Phil.”
“I do. I’ve been playing more in the last couple of years … but come on, America’s where it’s at. Not England. New York. Not London.”
Ian sucked his teeth.
“Listen,” Phil continued. “It’s not just about music … I love Margaret, and I want to stay near her.”
“But does she love you?” Ian asked, trying to sow seeds of doubt.
As he thought back to a conversation they’d had that morning, Ian admitted to himself that Phil buttressed his sagging ego. Make me a stud, Phil had asked when he came out of St. Vincent’s. And in daily chats and quizzes Ian had been trying to teach him what most men had learned in a lifetime—not really expecting him to learn. He taught him out of arrogance. Even with his help, he thought, Phil could never be as good as him.
After a slow start, Phil learned a lot about sex, got the hang of it—at least in theory—as evidenced by his good scores on Ian’s pop quizzes, which came without warning or regard for place. On the train. In the tub. At breakfast. During trumpet practice.
“If you don’t want to come too fast, what you must do?” Ian asked one day as he and Phil waited on a supermarket checkout line.
“Is that before or during?” Phil replied.
“Don’t answer me back a question wid a question. Before.”
“Easy. Jerk off at least twice, at most an hour before you go. It’ll take you longer to come the third time.”
“Good. What about during?”
“When you feel it coming, look away, don’t engage in explicitly sexual talk, and think of yourself pushing your dick in the blades of a fan.”
“What if de poompoom big?”
“Deep or wide?”
“Don’t answer me back a question wid a question. Deep.”
“Well … if you’ve got her in missionary, put her legs over your shoulders, grip her by the ass, and raise yourself to a kneeling position. This combination shortens her vagina and allows an extra inch and a half of your dick to get in compared to the basic missionary.”
“What if dat don’t work?”
“Take her from the back.”
“Just from de back? You know how much ways you can fuck a woman from de back, bwai? Specify.”
“Oh. Let her kneel with her head down flat, like a Muslim at prayer … then kneel behind her on one knee with the other foot flat and that knee bent … y’know, basically crouching on one knee. Hold her by the waist and work it. It shortens her vagina more than leg-over-shoulder, plus you still get the extra inch and a half.”
“What if it’s wide?”
“Legs crossed to constrict vagina. Good positions are standing face-to-face, lying face-to-face woman on top.”
“Now, quickly. Five rules to live by de first time you fuckin a woman?”
“Always have an extra pack of condoms. Always with the lights on so you can see what you’re getting into. Always before dinner, never after—cause it’s never worth it on a full stomach. Always do it her way today to improve your chances of getting to do it your way tomorrow. Always do it twice in case tomorrow never comes.”
Margaret’s voice pulled him out of the reverie. “I think you should go and see your mother.”
She turned up the ends of her mouth to seal her opinion, hoping the conversation wouldn’t go any further because they’d argued several times about his distance from Miss Gita. She’d said to him quite often that he resented all women because he resented his mother. To which he’d often replied that she was defending her because she was a whore as well.
He was thinking of this now as she began to undress.
Fuck, they would have to be quick, he thought. Phil would be returning from the parade soon. And he didn’t want to hurt his feelings. The poor boy was naïve enough to believe that Margaret would be faithful.
“Do you want me to strip for you?” she asked, taking a sip of merlot. She smacked her lips, which were painted a coppery brown.
“We don’t have time,” he said, feeling bad for Phil momentarily. He was too nice. He didn’t deserve this.
He was feeling the heat of her lips from a distance. Those lips, he thought. Those lips.
A few days after she’d said she would never screw him again, she came to see Phil and did everything to get in his way, to rub it in. Walking around half clothed and shit.
As he lay in bed resting, he heard them in the sleeping bay above the kitchen, then on the stairs, then on the bed beside him while he pretended to sleep. He heard her moan. Heard her sigh. Heard her tell Phil to come in her mouth. Heard her slurp and swallow through these same lips.
But he didn’t respond. He held it in.
He would break her, he knew. And he had. She’d apologized afterward. By phone and in a letter. But that wasn’t the proof he needed. This was it. She was peeling the shirt down to her waist, revealing a white teddy into which her body was poured like a cup of coffee. Her breasts spilled over the top like cream on mugs of cappuccino.
You’re such a nasty bitch, he thought. He felt the urge to smack her. Which drove—or was it driven by?—his need for her to hold him and rock him and tell him that she loved him best and not Phil and that he didn’t have to worry about Miss Gita, because she would mummy him whenever he needed. As he watched her slide out of the rest of her clothes he found himself comparing the woman he’d first met with the one in front of him, the one with the fleshy hips who was lying topless on the bed in a transparent G-string, the one whose fatness pulled the spit into his mouth like the breast of a roasted chicken.
It was 1985, Ian remembered. Fire had just moved to London, and he’d begun to make a name for himself. It wasn’t a spectacular meeting. He saw her in a Paris metro station, followed her onto the train, and slipped her a drawing that he’d made of her while she stood on the platform—an opening flush that had served him well in the past. Five stops later she agreed to meet him for dinner. And the next evening he arrived at the restaurant with flowers and high expectations and met her boyfriend, whom she’d invited. She was from St. Louis, he discovered over dinner, and her boyfriend from Tallahassee. They were music students at Berklee—she in jazz piano and he in trumpet—and they were both traveling outside America for the first time. There was an endearing greenness to them, a provincialism that he liked because it defined him as cosmopolitan. So he adopted them for the rest of their stay, which was three months, and they willingly surrendered authority. He picked up the tab at meals, took them to galleries and museums, and drove them out to the country in his Alfa. Then he moved them into his apartment for the last three weeks because they ran out of money. That’s when he began to spend time with her, because her boyfriend continued to move with a crowd of posey Americans that he’d met at their hotel.
I’ve never met a man like you, she used to say all the time. You know so much, you’ve done so much and seen so much. Gosh, Ian, I wanna be like you … y’know … make money from my art. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to do that, she would say. She felt she had the talent. But she was afraid of the cycle of feast and famine. Her father, a pianist who’d recorded with Gerry Mulligan, had died in obscurity, so she knew the danger of life on the edge.
I’ve never met a man like you. Whenever she said this, he would put his hand on her shoulder, and feel her innocence drawing the anger from his soul. She created beauty so easily, he would remark to himself. Even
when she played the piano. Her touch was so light it seemed she barely touched the keys, as if the keyboard were connected to her fingertips by invisible lengths of string and creating the lushest melodies was a simple matter of flexing her knuckles.
Two weeks before she left, he told her over a bottle of wine in his studio that he thought he was falling in love with her. What would it take, he asked, for her to love him in return? Nothing, she said. She was in love with him too, had fallen in love at first sight. It was his eyes, she said. She’d fallen in love with the pain there.
They kissed. It was awkward. Her tongue flapped like a child’s excited hello. No, he said, holding her face. Not like so. Like so. And taught her.
Under his guidance they kissed, they touched, undressed, and … went no further because, she said, trembling as he mounted her, she was saving herself for marriage. Promise me, she said as she dressed herself quickly, that we will never do this again. And don’t mention it ever, she added. Not even to me.
And everything was normal again—until two weeks later, when she was leaving for the States.
They got high together at the going-away party and tried again in the wine cellar. And again, as he tried to penetrate, she began to cry. She was guilty, she said. He tried to reason with her, which made her cry even more, and he became frustrated and stormed away.
Returning to the studio to brood, he caught her boyfriend cotched on a pedestal with a nodding crew cut between his legs, and he went back to find Margaret. The only way to get her for himself, he thought, was to break her heart. He led her to the room feigning innocence and made her open the door. And she ran away screaming.
It took him a while to find her. He drove around looking for her, ashamed of himself and completely in love, wanting to comfort her and beg her to stay with him. He’d never loved like that in his life. Had never loved a woman at all.
He eventually found her in the studio—at two o’clock in the morning, drunk and coked-up, lying on a workbench with her skirt up, giggling then moaning in chemically dulled pain as three of his German acquaintances had their way.
Waiting in Vain Page 20