“What man only drops by for a coffee this late at night, Verna?” he’d said.
“Stop fussing. He is just lonely!”
“And why must it be you fi keep him company?”
“Not all men are snakes, yuh know,” she’d answered. “Not all men are you.”
No, Sister Bernice and Sister Ida probably know nothing about that. That’d be too much of Nana’s business for them to be privy to, up there with the bush medicine I’d see her take once in a while and the obeah woman my mother said Nana went to when she was a kid. I’d like to ask them where they think my grandfather is now but instead I watch as my mother reaches into her purse and takes out the gift box she had professionally wrapped at The Bay. She got the kind of quality paper Nana would appreciate, a deep Christmas red, finished with a glittering gold ribbon tied into a bow. There’s an envelope I’ve never seen before taped to the box and my mother unconsciously passes her thumb over it in a back-and-forth motion.
Sister Ida gets up to examine the framed photo of the Royals Nana has hung on the wall, and Sister Bernice goes into the living room to join her. The photo, a black-and-white still of Elizabeth II’s wedding to Prince Philip, hangs above the china cabinet in the corner, next to a copy of the Royal Standard of Jamaica. It holds no meaning for me, but my mother sneers at it every time she sees it. But now, Sister Ida and Sister Bernice have somehow started arguing the merits of two cricket players, Frank Worrell and Lawrence Rowe — batsmen, I think. Nana laughs by herself in the kitchen, telling stories about fiah kitty, content with the fact that she is her only listener. I finish putting cucumbers and shredded carrots into the salad and then my mother catches my eye, mouthing my name as a way to call me over to where she’s sitting.
I leave my post at the dining table and venture into the living room. She hands me the present with the same trembling hands that rang the doorbell earlier.
“Give this to Nana,” she says. “And tell her to read the card now.”
By the time I make it back to the kitchen, Nana has taken the turkey out of the oven and heaved the pot onto the stove. She claps her hands together the way she does when she finishes a large task and then acknowledges that she sees me.
“The salad finish?” she asks.
“Oh, yeah,” I say.
“Ah wah?” she says, laughing. “Yuh want another chore?”
“No, I mean, sure, maybe later.” I don’t know where this sense of pressure is coming from, why I feel the weight of my mother’s gaze on my shoulders, but it makes me awkward as I speak to her. I hold out the gift in front of me.
“Merry Christmas,” I say.
Nana doesn’t accept the present right away and I will her to just take it and make things easier on me for once.
“I know we usually put the presents under the tree but it’s important that you read the card now,” I say.
It’s a few more moments before Nana takes the gift box from me. When she does, she gently traces her fingertips over the wrapping paper.
“This is very nice,” she says, and I know when she peels off the wrapping at the end of the night, she’ll do so carefully, delicately, so she can use it for something else.
She tears open the cream-coloured envelope to reveal a green Christmas card. On the front, an angel made of swirls and snowflakes holds a trumpet to her lips, blowing out a Bible verse: And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. Luke 2:10.
Nana nods her head in appreciation before opening the card to read what’s written inside. I look back to the living room, and my mother is making a show out of watching TV. Something is about to be different.
Something big.
Nana’s expression tells me nothing when she finishes reading and puts the card and present on one of the chairs around the dining table. She moves back to the stove and peers into the stockpot again, using a long wooden spoon to check the rice. After she turns off the burner, she leans to her left and looks at the pendulum clock hanging on the wall above the sink.
“Eh-eh, look at the time!” she says. “Bernice. Ida. Yuh must fi gwine now to catch the evening service. With all this snow and storm and t’ing.”
Sister Ida glances at the thin gold watch around her wrist and exclaims at seeing the time.
“Yes, Bernice, we should go,” she says.
“Oh all right.”
They both wish me and my mother a Merry Christmas and tell us that they’ll pray for our prosperity at service. Nana doesn’t let them leave before handing them one of the two black cakes she baked. This one doesn’t have rum in it, she explains. She walks Sister Ida and Sister Bernice to the door and they spend another five minutes saying their goodbyes before they finally leave. Nana watches them from the oval window for a few seconds and then heads back into the kitchen, opening the cupboard next to the sink.
She pulls out a glass plate, one of her wide and thick ones, then she starts shaving off portions of the turkey, digging out some of the stuffing with a fork afterwards. Three slices on the dish and six forkfuls on the slices. She adds three large spoonfuls of rice and peas, and then two pieces of ham with baked pineapple. The four slices of plantain lets me know this plate is for me. Without a word, she sets it down on a placemat, turns back around to the cupboard, and takes out a small bowl with gold trim, filling it with the salad I spent most of the visit preparing.
I don’t try to talk to her while she does this, unveils her art and sets up her masterpiece, while she takes out the bottle of Thousand Island dressing and the pitcher of sorrel from the fridge, setting them on the table by my plate. The anticipation I feel as she takes out an amber drinking glass from the cabinet makes the house feel familiar again, and the unease I’ve felt since my mother took out Nana’s present reverts to a more familiar awkwardness. It’s the awkwardness I’m used to and have learned to expect, the awkwardness that fuses with excitement for Christmas dinner.
Nana speaks only after she puts a fork and knife on either side of the glass dish and sets the white gravy boat in the middle of the table.
“Do not forget fi say grace and thank God for his bounty.”
She pulls out the chair for me to sit in and when I get settled, she looks across to the living room.
“In the bedroom,” says my mother.
Nana leaves the kitchen and my mother gets up from the couch and walks through the archway to the back of the house. A couple of seconds later, I hear the click of a door closing and then nothing but the hymns from the radio and the narration from the TV. How the Grinch Stole Christmas is on, the old one, not the one I saw in the theatres a couple of years ago.
. . . Yet in thy dark streets shineth. The everlasting Light. The hopes and fears of all the years. Are met in thee tonight . . .
. . . Fahoo fores, dahoo dores, welcome Christmas, bring your light. Fahoo fores, dahoo dores, welcome in the cold of night . . .
I sit still for a bit, waiting to hear something from the bedroom. When no shouting rings throughout the house, I close my eyes and clasp my hands together to say grace.
Dear Lord, thank —
I open one eye, straining my ears. Still nothing. I close them again.
Dear Lord . . . Dear Lord . . . Dear Lord, I just want to get through this Christmas with no one dying. Amen.
I pick up my knife and fork but don’t do anything with them. The silence from the bedroom is distracting; they’ve never been this quiet together for this long. An image of them silently struggling for domination, their hands wrapped around each other’s throats, flashes in my mind and urges me to push out my chair and get up from my seat.
I haven’t wandered this house in years, but I still remember the creak spots on the floorboards from when I was a kid and I tiptoe around them, getting as close as I can to the door while still being far enough to pretend I’
m on my way to the washroom if I’m caught.
I hold my breath to better hear what’s happening. My mother’s voice comes first.
“It’s the Christian thing to do.”
“Backside!” says Nana. “Yuh must really be desperate fi tell me about Christianity.”
My mother’s words come out wary and measured. “Like I said, there are six months left on the lease but after that . . .” Silence. “I am asking for Kara.”
“What about she father? Canna ask him for help?”
A pause.
“When I knew him he could barely help himself, and it’s been years since I’ve known him. Listen, do you really think you aren’t my last resort? I am asking for some understanding and some kindness.” There’s a deep sigh. “It is Christmas, after all.”
Silence. For a second I’m scared that I’ve been found out, that the door will open and they’ll find me standing here, but Nana speaks.
“One year, Eloise. Mi ah give yuh one year and one year alone.”
I don’t hear what she says next. I don’t want to hear. As swiftly as I can, I creep back to the kitchen and resume my seat at the dining table. It’s only when I pick up my knife and fork again that I realize I’m still holding my breath and I exhale. One year. I pour some gravy onto the turkey. One year living in this house again. I eat a piece of ham. One year living under her rule. I take a bite of plantain. I don’t see how we’ll survive it, how my mother will survive it.
The door clicks open again and Nana walks into the kitchen first, opening the cupboard and taking out another glass plate. My mother comes in after her and stops behind my chair, bending down to kiss me on the top of my head and stroke the baby hairs curled by my ears. Neither of them says anything.
I take a chance. “What did you two talk about?”
My mother sits down in the chair next to me. “Eat your food,” she says.
“Listen to yuh mother,” says Nana, putting the rest of the turkey slices onto the plate.
I continue to eat, putting a forkful of stuffing in my mouth. The uneasiness I thought I’d moved past comes back and works through my body, making it difficult for me to swallow. It’s hard to know if my mother will even tell me we’ll be living here or if one day she’ll just turn down Whitmore Avenue, park in the driveway outside, and act as if this is a routine we’ve been doing for as long as I’ve been alive. Nana adds the rice and peas to my mother’s plate.
“Last year you told me they called you fiah kitty because you had a bad temper,” I say. “It didn’t have anything to do with cricket.”
“Yeah, well she used to tell me it’s because her hair turned red in the sun,” says my mother. “It changes with every telling.”
“So she lies,” I say. “She’s a liar.”
My mother turns to me, a rare quiet anger in her expression. “Apologize,” she says. “Apologize to your grandmother right now.”
Nana acts like she can’t hear us and puts my mother’s plate in front of her seat, on the placemat.
“Thank you,” says my mother.
She doesn’t take her eyes off me and I lower mine then mumble, “I’m sorry, Nana.”
Nana makes her way back to the counter. “Mi just like fi tell stories,” she says. “Eloise,” she looks over to my mother, “maybe Kara get she storytelling from me. Remember when she used fi tell tall tales inna school? When she was small?”
My mother eats some stuffing and nods her head. “I do.”
I narrow my eyes at them. They’ve found something just short of camaraderie with each other, an understanding maybe, an alliance in keeping a secret from me, in lying to me. I wonder where it’ll all go when one of them finally tells me the truth, how long it’ll last when we’re all under the same roof again.
My mother nudges me. “Why aren’t you eating?”
I shrug and put a large forkful of rice in my mouth as a response.
“Okay, well, since you’re not inhaling your food like you normally do,” she says, “change the channel or turn the TV off. This show or movie or whatever it is is annoying.”
I get up from the dining table and walk back into the living room, facing the TV. The Grinch starts to smile his famous smile as his dog, Max, frowns, covered in snow.
Then he got an idea. An awful idea. The Grinch got a wonderful, awful idea!
I pick up the remote, turn off the TV, and then walk back to the dining table.
“Thanks,” says my mother.
I nod as I watch her stuff a piece of turkey in her mouth, as Nana puts the ham back in the oven to warm it up again, those words in my head: An idea. An awful idea. A wonderful, awful idea . . .
Inspection
10:30 a.m.
By this time Kara has taken a second shower. The first one was more like a rinse, Eloise says. This time Kara uses the expensive body wash, the one Nana bought her from Crabtree & Evelyn — it smells like rose petals and it exfoliates. Cousins always ask her about it at family outings. It’s the only time they ask her about anything.
And don’t forget to scrub your underarms. You have a problem with sweating.
I know, Mom. Okay?
Are you using a tone with me?
Sorry.
* * *
11:00 a.m.
Applying lotion is important. Kara coats her legs three times. The only thing worse than an unkempt head is ashy elbows and blackened knees. To walk around anywhere with dry skin is to walk around a motherless child, but Kara isn’t going just anywhere, she’s going back to her old neighbourhood. It’s been three weeks since she’d last been to Eglinton West and Marlee, eight months since her mother moved them out of Nana’s house to Wilson and Bathurst.
A dry patch on the skin wouldn’t attract any stares or whispers, nothing so obvious as to alert Kara to her offence, but soon it would be known that Kara Davis wasn’t raised proper. Canna even cream her legs them, the church women would say. And when the murmurs reached Nana, who would leave a voicemail for Eloise, a slap would sting Kara’s skin and Eloise would yell, “How do you have no sense that you forgot to cream your skin? Now everyone is talking!”
She makes sure to get in between her fingers and especially the spaces in between her toes. Maybe she’ll rub on some baby oil to be safe.
* * *
11:10 a.m.
There is an anxious bent to her shoulders now; she never seems to have anything to wear. The outfit she needs is particular. It always has to be, when she goes back to the neighbourhood.
An outfit dressy enough for people to know she has standards, that her mother taught her well and her grandmother before her, but plain enough so they won’t sneer behind her back. It’s a balance her neighbourhood friends say she’s never mastered.
It’s July, and hot. Wear a sundress, says Eloise. Like the ones those bohemian girls wear. The Erykah Badu one.
Kara only has one dress like that: the turquoise one that people say is coloured like the ocean. She prefers jeans, even shorts, but she doesn’t feel like arguing and puts the dress on anyway. She hates it.
She hates the way it falls on her like it’s a sheet. Hates the way it accentuates her lack of breasts, lack of curves, lack of the voluptuous beauty that makes her aunts and cousins laugh behind their hands and say, Yuh sure yuh a Jamaican gyal?
She doesn’t stand in the mirror too long.
* * *
11:45 a.m.
The anxiety in Kara’s shoulders morphs into pure fear. The real battle has approached.
Her hair.
It’s been a week since she has combed it out; she hasn’t been anywhere important, just the Pizza Pizza by Collinson Boulevard and the twenty-four-hour coin laundry by Laurentia Crescent while her mother went to the Money Mart across the street. She clenches and gasps and grunts and groans as she wields the comb, ripping through a thicket of knots a
nd tearing through clumps of tangles, trying to uncoil the ringlets before they scrunch back up into tight curls. Her scalp is raw; she may be getting a headache. Spraying on texture softener isn’t fast enough. She takes the nozzle off of the bottle of Just for Me and dumps it all over her head, rubbing it into her roots.
Her hair starts to take shape. It’s only acceptable. She can already see the raised eyebrows from the women also going natural, their beautifully sculpted ’fros, black bouquets of hydrangeas atop their heads. Every time she sees them, she wants to yell at them to stop side-eyeing her knotted curls.
* * *
12:30 p.m.
Sweat starts to prickle Kara’s underarms and she reapplies the deodorant Eloise gave her, the one actually made for men, and then sprays on some perfume for good measure. She adjusts her dress so her bra doesn’t show. Last time she visited the neighbourhood, boys spotted a patch of pink lace and followed her for a block and a half. The attention was a twisted phenomenon. Boys ignored the skinny girls: no breasts, no real ass, nothing to bark at. But still they followed her, laughing and catcalling: Damn girl, can I getta piece o’ dat? With each step she’d taken she prayed that they’d leave her alone, but was pleased to have a discomfort to report to her friends. According to them, this was what it was to be a woman.
The old-timer women had looked at her with pursed lips, raising their eyebrows like she was having sex right there on the street for children and God to see. She was too afraid, too guilty, to try to see if any of them knew anyone from her family and decided it was best to go home before something happened that she couldn’t take back.
* * *
12:32 p.m.
It’s time for inspection.
Eloise tells Kara to stand back so she can see her better, so she can see the full effect of what Kara put together.
Frying Plantain Page 6