‘Ready in ten minutes, then. I going to eat a little dinner.’ Him step through the bedroom door with a white T-shirt in his hand marked: ‘Crash Program Week, March 16-22, Keep Your Country Clean’.
During the whole time she was pulling on her jeans and looking around for a blouse to match, she was certain him hear from somebody that she was leaving. And even while him was driving her to the movie house, the car working its way in and out through traffic, she know him was trying to make friends with her, so she wouldn’t go, or so she would tell him so him could tear up her papers or prevent her from catching her plane. She remained quiet inside the car, for when him was like this, extra-loving and kind all of a sudden, she wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. One minute she want to soften up to him, next, she know she must be careful.
‘Two shows playing,’ him tell her. ‘One Western with John Wayne, and the other is karate with Bruce Lee. Which one you prefer?’
‘Bruce Lee,’ she tell him, her voice eager. She enjoy watching the various styles of fighting, praying mantis was her favourite, then Shalin. She like it especially when the theatre have plenty people clapping and cheering as the enemy either win or lose, according to how them want it. She and Rudi and Delores and Dave used to attend Saturday afternoon matinees, long while back.
Walter did buy nuts from the vendor at the door. Everytime his fingers knock up against hers, as them reach inside the bag at the same time, she wasn’t sure if it was just accident, playfulness or if him was ready to pounce on her any moment. Nevertheless she enjoyed the movie.
‘What kind of sudden change is this?’ she ask as them make them way back home.
Him face her, forehead puzzled as if him wasn’t sure what she was talking about. ‘How you mean, change?’ Him look in the rear view mirror at his reflection and wrinkle his forehead.
Gwennie smile. ‘You well know what I mean.’ For in truth she couldn’t believe it, just three weeks ago the man was ready to tear down the whole house in his determination to find her papers so him could burn them up. And look at Walter now, face smily-smily like everything peachy.
And as Gwennie stand up in the middle of the living room, eyes fix nowhere in particular, arms akimbo, she was glad she didn’t make that evening at the movies fool her, for two days before she leave, him was crazy again. She went to the meeting with Percy as usual, the last one. And after Percy pull up at her gate and she tell him good night and was about to open the car door and step out, Percy pull her back. ‘Gwennie, Gwennie look up at the window.’
‘Is what?’ Gwennie ask, turning her head to follow his fingers. And just as she see it, the curtain draw back same time and the wooden louvre shut up. ‘Him watching me,’ Gwennie sigh and step out the car. Walter was standing inside the living room when she open up the front door with her key.
‘Might as well you just go home with him,’ Walter greet her. ‘This late time at night, might as well,’ him look at his watch. ‘Why bother to come home any a tall?’ His voice was loud, but it wasn’t angry, just tired. Gwennie tried to brush pass him, but him grab her hand. She pry open his fingers, inhaling the rum high on his breath.
‘Let me go.’ Her voice was low and tired. ‘Just don’t bother with me, tonight.’
His grip tighten even more, and she sigh out loud. The man in front her now wasn’t the Walter of last week, or two weeks ago, or even three weeks. This Walter wasn’t the man she go to the movie with, or the one that would come read with her out in the living room. This man was different. His eyes were red and wild-looking and hard. She couldn’t read them. But him was sad. The whole room was sad with him. And she was starting to feel sad too. The children were already in bed, but she know them would be up listening. Sometimes she wonder what them think, especially Rudi.
‘Walter, come let’s go inside the room. Don’t bother to wake up the children.’
Him allow her to drag him into the room, and by the time his head hit the pillow, him was fast asleep. Gwennie take-off his slippers and socks and straighten him out on the bed. She pull up the cover over him.
But by morning the cursing start up again. Sunday evening same thing. Him tell her she was no damn good for she was keeping men with him. Monday morning instead of setting off to school, she kiss her children goodbye and Percy, who’d taken the day off from work, help her to pack her last pieces of luggage in his car before driving her to Grandma’s. Walter did leave early the Monday morning according to his own plans. Him was going to a convention with people from work.
‘But you know, Gwennie, I think that man love you,’ Percy say to her the Monday morning. Plenty cars weren’t on the road, so the driving was smooth, easy. ‘Love you to distraction.’
Gwennie shake her head. ‘No, that’s not love. That’s something else. Something distorted. I don’t know what. But that’s not love.’
‘Then why you think him so jealous? Why you think him watch you so? Why you think him so possessive? Him know you leaving, and even though him nice to you, you still don’t trust him to tell him. I think it make him crazy.’
‘I don’t care what you say, Percy, the man don’t have all his faculties together up in his head part. How can one person change like that in the course of two weeks. Change from normal loving human being into wild animal. Explain that to me, Percy Clock.’
Percy couldn’t explain it. All him say is that Walter love her but him frustrated, for she Gwennie don’t love him back same way. And since Gwennie never agree with him, she try and change the subject. But her heart was heavy. Her children didn’t even did get the chance to come and see her off and wave goodbye to her at the airport. Here she was, a big married woman, yet she have to be running and hiding away from her own house, leaving her children behind as if she was doing something wrong. As if she didn’t deserve the rights to a little peace of mind and a little rest and . . .
And as the doorbell ring startling Gwennie, for it was Clive ready to drive her to the airport, Gwennie wipe back the eye water that was starting to gather at her eye corners. She didn’t know the day would finally come. It take five years and plenty suffering, but here it was. The door bell ring again and she walk towards the door. It was minutes to eight.
‘I won’t bother to come in and take a seat,’ Clive say to her from the doorway. ‘It’s getting late. Put on your jacket and come. It’s a little windy outside.’
‘Come in, come sit down little. I have to haul on me shoes.’
‘Lord, Gwennie, man. Look from the time I call to tell you I was coming over. What you been doing all this time? Why you not ready?’
‘Clive, go and sit down a little bit and stop rushing me,’ Gwennie call out from her bedroom.
‘Christ, Jesus, why you must take so long to get ready. My goodness!’
‘What I tell you about the bawling out of Jesus’ name in vain, Cleveland Angels.’
‘Lord, Gwennie, just make haste and come. You argue and gripe about Jesus too much.’
Gwennie laugh. She was ready, her bag in hand with four warm sweaters inside. She did have on her coat. ‘Alright, I ready.’ She lock the door behind her, and follow Clive out to the blue Buick. The spring air was a little bit nippy. She was glad she bring the sweaters. It was ten minutes to eight when she buckle up inside Clive’s warm car. ‘We late, Clive?’
‘Gwennie, American planes hardly ever on time, so don’t worry yourself.’ Clive put the car in drive, turn on the lights, and roll out her driveway.
II
When Clive and Gwennie reach the airport, it was a little after eight-thirty. And all the search them search, not a sign of Gwennie’s four children.
‘You think we lose them, Clive?’
‘Gwennie, don’t talk foolishness. How we going to lose them? If them arrive and don’t see you, them can sit down and wait. Them is big children. Furthermore them might have to wait long at customs since them from abroad.’
‘No,’ Gwennie shake her head. ‘Them do all of that in New York already. Fo
r that is the first port of entrance.’
‘Well, them must be around here somewhere, then.’ Clive kiss his teeth, eyes squint-up tight as him scan the airport. ‘This place is so damn big.’
The two of them were standing up inside the arrival section of Bradley International. It was packed to distraction with people. Every few seconds, a voice over the intercom report which flight ready to depart, which one touching down, which one the people must start boarding and at which gate. Gwennie was standing up next to Clive, the handbag with the four sweaters clutch tight underneath her arm.
‘Gwennie, I don’t even know who I must look for. What the children wearing, you know?’
Gwennie shake her head slowly. ‘Just look for four of them,’ she tell him, her voice worried and tight, ‘three big ones and one small baby girl.’
But all the look them look, still no sign.
‘You stay right here, don’t move,’ Clive say to her after a while. ‘I going to look over in that section, one more time.’
Gwennie’s eyes lift up in the direction of his finger. She spot a row of seats where people who just come off the plane, sit down and wait. She wonder if the children change so radically that she was probably looking at them right now and didn’t know it. She wonder if Rudi and Dave stout up with beard and moustache, if Del grow turn into big woman and Rosa, big girl. But she don’t think so. Time don’t fly that much.
‘We might as well ask the lady at the counter,’ Clive say over her shoulder, walking up silently behind her.
Them push them way through the crowd and up to the counter. Gwennie’s back was stiff with worry. She could barely carry herself straight. Another plane had just come in from New York, and Gwennie strain her head to look in the face of every child that pass, to see if she recognize Dave’s redness or Rosa’s round face in the crowd, but nothing.
‘You think maybe them never get on the plane,’ Gwennie say more to herself than to Clive. ‘Maybe Walter, out of grudgeful and bad mind because I didn’t send for him, find out that them leaving and stop them, tear up the papers, bar them from leaving the house.’
‘Them have your phone number. I’m sure them would call.’ Clive’s voice was calm. ‘If something wrong, them bound to call.’ Clive was a man slow to rise to any kind of emotional stir. ‘The way you talk plenty about the big boy, Rudi, all the time, I sure nothing the matter that just won’t work itself out.’
‘Maybe,’ Gwennie say to him, ‘maybe.’ But to herself she know that it have to be Walter who stop them. She did have her hand on her jaw. Look how she hope and pray for this day to come. Look how she work hard and suffer, with the hopes that one day—one day her children can come and live with her. That them can be one big family again, even if Walter wasn’t there. And look, now. All of that for nothing a tall.
‘Gwennie, get in line and stop the worrying. I going to call your brother, Samuel, to see if the children phone him.’
Gwennie take the space at the end of the line. Four people were in front. More start to gather up behind. The line was moving quickly. Not as many people were in this section of the airport. Gwennie sigh. Walter no doubt find the letters. That was the only reason she can think of. She don’t know why Rudi wasn’t more careful with them, why him never just read them, or just tear them up, burn them . . .
‘Next!’
Gwennie move up to the counter. Her mind couldn’t even focus on the face in front, her eyes were filled to the brim with eye water. Things like these can only cause her to burn candle for Walter and wish that bad things happen to him. She always use to hope that she and Walter would never come to this, that if she ever go back home, them could behave like old friends.
She always used to hear about women back home who tie cloth and soak it in ashes for husbands who ill-treat them, and the husband would all of a sudden come down with sickness: pneumonia, comsumption, bad belly, all kinds of ailments. She used to hear about husbands who lift up hands to strike the wife and when them don’t cripple up on the spot, them drop down stone-dead as bird. No, she never thought it would come to this between she and Walter, but now she understand what those women were going through.
She tell the lady at the counter, Patty, according to the pin on her chest, the name of her four children, where them coming from and how they were supposed to get on the flight in New York.
Patty’s head float back and forth before Gwennie full-to-the-brim-eye-water eyes, as she shake her brown wavy hair, long, red fingernails knocking impatiently gainst the computer screen. ‘No, ma’am. They aren’t here. They’re registered for the flight, but they never got on. Sorry! Next!’
‘How you mean them never . . .’ Gwennie say to her, ready to argue. But the man behind was already starting to pull his bags closer to Gwennie’s white pumps.
‘Next! Ma’am, you’re holding up the line. Next!’
‘Damn you to blast,’ Gwennie mutter under her breath as she cut her eyes pass the man behind her, and the eye water spill over onto her cheeks. Damn you to hell. My four children are lost and what you care, what you business. She walk over to where Clive was standing, nearby the revolving doors, her eyes red, but her forehead knit-up and her jawbone and top lip stiff and determined.
‘No luck, either?’ Clive sigh as she march over, her footsteps heavy. ‘Eh, might as well go home and wait till them call. Samuel say he and the wife been home all evening watching football. Not a word from the children.’
But Gwennie didn’t even hear him, she was already through the door on her way over to where him park the car, the nippy March breeze blowing cold around her. If she don’t hear from her children by tonight, she would have to send a telegram to find out if Walter was the stumbling block in them path. And if that was the case, she would have to call her friend, Daphne, and ask her about the Montserrat man that have the little one-room, card-reading, candle-burning office not far from her house. She would have to fix Walter once and for all.
During the drive back to Gwennie’s house on Evelyn Street, not a word was spoken inside the car. Shadows cover over Clive’s features and Gwennie’s face was calm, a film of blankness over her eyes. They were focused on the road in front, but them never register the pond near the airport where all the fish have tumour so large, you can’t tell the difference between the tumour and the fish own self. Her eyes never register the railway track that follow the highway for miles and miles, or even the billboards that advertise Liberty Mutual Insurance, and Buick, America’s No. 1 family car, and Howard Johnson’s special weekend rate.
Not even when Clive turn off the highway and move into the Puerto Rican neighbourhood did her eyes register the Spanish-American grocery store, where she sometimes ask the bus driver to let her off so she can buy bulla cake, fifty cents for half dozen, that she like to eat longside with pear and a tall glass of fresh milk. And when Clive slow down to make the right turn on Evelyn Street, her eyes never cut pass the housing project to her right, as usual, that always smell of urine and always have graffitti on the boarded up doors and windows, and where no matter what hour of the day or night, children always outside playing basketball. No, tonight, Gwennie’s eyes weren’t paying attention to Evelyn Street’s big sore.
Instead, it was way back. Back to when she was about eight or nine, trying to figure out what it was she’d done then, why tribulation following her now, thirty years later. She wonder if is because she’d carelessly step on Blossom Pitter’s pair of glasses and break them up in two, lens and all, and wouldn’t admit to it for fear Blossom would tell her mother, who in turn would go to Grandma for the money and after Grandma and Grandpa finish cipher and give Miss Pitter the money, Grandma would turn around and beat Gwennie same way.
Or maybe is when she and Odette Chambers and Lucille Powell were inside the toilet one recess, panties roll down, fingers probing deep inside one another. But no, she wasn’t more than nine or ten. God can’t be punishing her for childhood sins. And Gwennie continue to think about the lies she used to
tell, the money she used to take out of Grandpa’s wallet so she and her friends could have more to spend at Harvest, or the times she used to cheat on exams. Yes, she know God is a good God, but maybe all those times she was testing his wrath without realizing it.
No, is the dog. It have to be the dog, Precious and the time when Grandma send her under the house to pick up the eggs. She’d carelessly fallen down, both she and the basket, breaking all thirteen eggs Grandma was going to sell so she could pay Mass Jasshe for last week’s piece of pork. She was so frightened, she stay under the house bottom till Grandma had to call and ask her if she can’t find the nest with the eggs. And Gwennie look-up into Grandma’s face and tell her no, she couldn’t find any, Precious probably eat them, for him was coming out from under the house licking his lips at the same time she was going under.
Grandma did tie up the poor dog to the gutter post and send Gwennie to cut a piece of guava-switch. And after Grandma whip the dog, she give him a poisoned egg, put him to rest. And Gwennie watch as the poor dog sniff the egg, then look at Grandma confused, for it know better than to eat her eggs, or to even go near them. But Precious did open his mouth and nonetheless swallow it down, for after all, a dog is a dog.
But she was young. She used to pray to God several times over asking His forgiveness. She used to hope Precious’ soul would go up to heaven. But that was a long time ago. God have to forgive her by now. Maybe it was a sign because of the common life she living with Clive. It have to be. What else could be causing God to punish her like this, to want to keep her children away from her. And so when Gwennie let in herself and Clive inside the house, she sat down opposite him in a high back chair instead of next to him on the brown-all-around settee.
And when Clive say to her, after sitting down lonely for about fifteen minutes, ‘Gwennie, how come you sitting so far away. I don’t bite, you know.’
Me Dying Trial Page 18