Frying Plantain

by Zalika Reid-Benta

  But I follow Nana into the house, careful to move my sandals to the side after I take them off on the welcome mat in the foyer. The crystal bowl full of red-and-white peppermint candies is still on the curved accent table, there for the neighbourhood kids who sometimes carry her grocery bags and regale her with hard-to-get gossip. I look to the left through the archway. The living room, carpeted in Oriental designs, is exactly how I remember it — filled with furniture all washed in tones of deep red. The mahogany china cabinet filled with Royal Henry tea sets still stands in a corner with a copy of the Royal Standard of Jamaica pinned above it, a print of the Royal Wedding next to the flag. Two Louis armchairs sit at either end of the camelback sofa that, ever since my childhood, has been enveloped in plastic covering, a “Keep Foot Off” note right above it. Directly across from the couch is the dining table, dividing the kitchen from the living room. As always, even though the television is on, she also has the radio tuned to a station dedicated to gospel and scripture. The same gold anniversary clock I once threw on the floor sits next to the stereo, mint and encased in a glass dome like it was never broken.

  “If yuh want fi sit on the chesterfield then sit,” says Nana as she closes the door and walks straight down the foyer and into the kitchen. “Yuh don’t haffi stand there all day.”

  “I’m good. Thanks.”

  “Well, if yuh change yuh mind.”

  “Then I’ll sit.”

  She nods her head and then turns on the sink’s faucet. There are only a couple of dirty dishes but she rubs her hands together like she’s about to work through a big load. I turn to the door that leads to the basement. She rents it out now, but when I was three or four it was where my father and I spent our evenings before he left my mother and me to live in it alone. My father and I would watch TV at low volume or play-fight quietly until my mother came in from night school. It was only then that he felt comfortable venturing up to the dining room to eat dinner while my mother decompressed downstairs and Nana showered for bed. Once, running up the stairs, I tripped, scraping my chin against the floor. Nana had been watching from the bathroom, her eyebrows raised, and when my mother realized I’d be okay, she whispered, “Don’t cry. Suck it up.” That’s how she always instructed me in front of Nana. In whispers.

  Nana calls out from the kitchen. “Yuh hungry? I have plantain here.”

  “That’s fine. I ate before I came.”

  “Yuh tellin’ mi yuh belly so full yuh canna even have a likkle snack?”

  The clock on the kitchen wall says it’s four. In an hour and a half the music store around the corner will be closed and I’ve been looking forward to going, to thumbing through the rocksteady records that the stores by my building don’t stock. I don’t want to stay here long.

  “Nana, I am not that hungry.”

  She barrels toward me and pinches my upper arm, making me jerk away from her. “Yuh skinny, mawga, like a stray cat. I tell yuh, say, one windy day yuh gwine fi walk on the street there suh and the breeze gwine fi pick yuh up and go! Come now, I start fi cook.”

  I could insist on leaving, but instead I only groan as she turns off the faucet and wipes her hands on a tea towel, moving toward the cupboard for her skillet. I lean against the basement door and dig my fingernails beneath my braids, scratching my scalp so I can have something to do with my hands.

  Nana’s frown relaxes when she puts her knife to the plantain, and even though I don’t want to be, I’m impressed by the way she slices off the skin. The way she peels plantain has always impressed me. The blade just slides through like nothing; there’s no sign of effort or struggle. I don’t see the blade tug at the toughness of the skin like when I do it. This looks easy; this looks like the plantain is undressing itself. A kind of content mindlessness passes over Nana’s face, making me feel a gentle uncertainty toward her that makes me uncomfortable. The peels drop onto the counter and she starts shaving the plantain into long slices. I want to tell her to just make circles, that that’s how I like it, but I just grunt instead, reminding myself not to get too involved in the process, that I’m not staying long. The pieces fall into the frying pan with every slice of the knife, sizzling as they land.

  “I know yuh nuh eat like this no more,” she says, pushing around the plantain with a fork.

  “I do sometimes.”

  Nana laughs harshly. “When? Yuh mother nuh teach you how fi cook, she nuh learn how fi cook from me. I nuh have no education but I know how fi cook.”

  “No one said anything about edu — ” I sigh. “Yes, Nana.”

  “I could have teach yuh, yuh know, I could teach yuh still, but yuh never stop by.”

  “I’m never really in this part of the city anymore.”

  She turns down the stove and moves her dutchie pot from the front burner to the back, replacing it with a second frying pan for the eggs.

  “Scramble or fry? Oh I know yuh like yuh eggs them fry, nuh true?”

  “Nana — yes.”

  She cracks the shell over the side of the pan and the scent is immediate. The clock says only seven minutes have passed.

  “Kara, get me the cinnamon from the pantry.”

  Her voice is so gruff I almost tell her to get it herself — but her voice is always hard. I step into the kitchen and open the pantry doors above the sink. It’s strange delving deeper into this house; moving from the foyer into the kitchen feels like abandoning my safety line and my escape, and I try my best to appear calm, to not betray the thudding in my chest. I give Nana the cinnamon and she sprinkles it on the plantain.

  “No brown sugar?”

  “A’right, that too,” she says, with what seems to be a hint of a grin pulling at the corner of her lips. “Get it. I’m just gwine fi put a stip.”

  Even as a child, I couldn’t understand how she could cook without using measurements and still make a meal that didn’t turn out disastrously; it’s a trick I’ve never learned. She shakes a pinch of brown sugar over the frying fruit and then turns the pieces over.

  “How’s the neighbourhood?” I ask. “It seems good.”

  “It’s a’right. I haffi praise Jesus yuh make it here safe.”

  “It seems as safe now as it was when we lived here.”

  “I did not say that it nuh safe. I just know that the boys them need discipline in their lives,” she says, flipping over the egg.

  * * *

  4.

  Our second stint at Nana’s house only lasted five months, but even after we left her bungalow, left the neighbourhood, I’d find myself walking up and down Eglinton West as much as I could, starting from Marlee and sometimes going as far as Keele. There were no jerk chicken shops or hairdressers that could braid or relax or twist hair into sisterlocks in the areas my mother moved us to. The schools I attended, those neighbourhoods just had colonies of fast-food chains and music stores that blasted American Top 40 from their speakers. Even the Shoppers Drug Marts were a letdown. Stores with row upon row of mousses and volumizers; white, thin-lipped faces on the bottles. The one time I asked for texture softener, the cashier told me to find a store farther west.

  “That’s what the storefinder says,” he said.

  Each time I’d visited this neighbourhood, either to spend my Saturday in the salon or spend it catching up with the friends I’d had to leave, I never once considered walking past the 7-Eleven and down the pathway to visit Nana. I never even thought I would see her on the main street; she did all of her grocery shopping after church. Back then, weekdays and Saturdays she worked her two jobs in the suburbs and came home at midnight, sometimes half past.

  The day I saw her, it was a summer afternoon, the hottest day in July, and I’d worn a turquoise sundress that fell to my ankles but had a V-neck neckline. When I walked by the boys who hung out in front of the Graphic Tees store, one of them stopped me to ask my name, his friends encouraging him loudly, yelling, �
�C’mon, he’s a nice guy! Give him your number, girl!”

  I don’t remember seeing her walk up to us but there she was next to me, her voice louder and harsher than all of them.

  “Kara!”

  “Nana?”

  “How yuh walkin’ around suh? With yuh titties a-door!”

  “Nana!”

  Some of the older boys clapped their hands over their mouths to keep from laughing, but a few of the younger ones bolted, either hopped on their bikes or just flat-out ran, probably afraid they’d see Nana in church with their mothers or grandmothers or aunts.

  “Yuh best fi come with me now,” she said, using her body to guide me away from the store. “Acting fresh with the boys them, yuh too slack!”

  “I wasn’t — ”

  “Hush up and come! Lord have mercy.”

  “I wasn’t doing anything! They just — ”

  “I will not help yuh raise no pickney, yuh know.”

  “Nana — ”

  “Hush up!”

  Only when we were in her house did she allow me to slip in a word or two. She sat me at the dining table and listened to my explanation while wiping down the kitchen counter with a tea towel. When I finished, she watched me for a moment.

  “A’right,” she said. “A’right.”

  She opened the fridge and took out a fresh black cake. She’d made it strong. The moment she took off the plastic wrap, I could smell the rum even though I was sitting a few feet away. She cut me a slice and gave me some carrot juice.

  “Yuh need fi be careful,” she said when I started to eat. “When the boys them come up to yuh, tell them yuh waitin’ for yuh father or yuh boyfriend. Yuh hear me?”

  “Yes, Nana.”

  “Good.”

  I’d called my mother to tell her what happened —

  better she heard it from me than from Nana or some other passerby — and thirty minutes later, she was honking the horn by the driveway, luring me outside. But Nana was out the door before I was.

  “How can yuh let her walk around with clothes like this?”

  My mother threw her head back against her seat and sighed. “Do you know how hot it is outside? She’s dressed fine.”

  “Yuh should’ve seen the way them boys was lookin’ at her, Eloise.”

  “Was she doing anything with them?”

  “I was there fi stop anything from happenin’.”

  “So you’re telling me if you weren’t there then Kara would’ve done something?”

  “I did not say —”

  “So then stop interfering with my child, Verna. Kara’s a sensible girl. She knows how to handle herself.”

  “Sensible? How yuh gwine fi talk about being ‘sensible’? I remember yuh was a sensible girl too and look what happened, pregnant at seventeen!”

  I saw it before Nana did, the shift in my mother’s eyes, the tightening of her hands on the steering wheel. Before I could stop it from happening, she was out of the car, and the two were screaming at each other, leaning into each other’s faces, oblivious to the ogling eyes peering out from semi-drawn curtains and closed blinds. I braced myself, watching every gesture and making sure they didn’t graduate to a slap or a push or a hair-pull.

  “You were Kara’s age when yuh start fi stay out all hours of the night!”

  “With a mother like you, how the hell could I not? All that goddamn yelling and cleaning I couldn’t go anywhere —”

  “At least I clean my place! Yuh take no pride in yuh house, yuh nuh clean, yuh nuh cook, yuh nuh go fi church, yuh canna raise a daughter proper!”

  “I swear to God if you bring up Kara one more time —”

  “What yuh gwine fi do, hmm? You think yuh a bad woman? Test me!”

  When the neighbours became bolder with their prying and stood out on their porches for a better view of the fight, Nana returned to her house and my mother and I got into the car and drove away. My mother turned down the next side street and parked beneath the shade of a large oak tree and screamed until I was sure she’d shredded her throat. She pounded the steering wheel, cursing, and I sat still with my face toward the windshield and my eyes closed.

  She turned the ignition back on. “I don’t want you coming up here anymore,” she said.

  * * *

  5.

  The plantain and eggs are done now, and Nana is putting two pieces of bread in the toaster. I am standing by the fridge, a few inches away from the foyer, and wonder when she’s going to tsk me for blocking the entryway even though I doubt anyone will be strolling in.

  The house smells sweet and crisp, and my eyes fix themselves on the plate of food on the counter, Nana’s body bustling around it, putting the pans in the sink to soak. The pop of the toaster startles me into checking the time again. Half an hour has passed since the last time I checked.

  “Yuh want something fi drink?”

  “I’ll just grab something.” I open the fridge and Nana heads over to me. “I nuh want yuh fi trouble my fridge,” she says. “I put everything in its place proper. Gwaan and sit down, I will bring it to yuh.”

  White linen covers the oval dining table as a first layer and then Nana has draped the linen over in a plastic sheet. Cloth placemats and lace doilies are in two separate piles around the floral centrepiece. Beneath all the layers the table is a deep, dark wood. I remember her smile when she made her last layaway payment for it one day after church. The store owner liked Nana so much he had his son deliver it to the house even though it was a Sunday, and she paid him to discard the birch wood table she was replacing.

  I take my seat and before I even settle in, Nana puts down my plate and a tall glass of Kola Champagne on a lace doily, then sits down next to me. It’s always a little strange when she sits, when she stops moving for just a moment and disregards the fact that things have to get done. It’s the same thing with my mother. Except that her energy is quiet, potent but below the surface, so when she’s no longer moving, there’s a slight shift in the atmosphere. Nana’s loud. Robust. When she’s still, everything around her seems to slow down.

  I pick up my fork and she watches me put the plantain in my mouth — she’s outwardly calm but it feels like she’s holding her breath. When I nod my head at the sweetness seeping into my tongue, she leans back in her chair.

  “Nuh too dry?”

  “No,” I say. “It’s great.”

  She lets me eat without talking for a while, smoothing her hands over the plastic. “So how is school?”

  “It’s good. Hard. Lots of work. I can’t wait to graduate.”

  “Mm. Yes, I know it’s hard work since yuh gwine fi study fi be a pediatrician inna university.”

  I chew slowly. “I was nine when I said that. I’m nineteen now. Things change.”

  “So what yuh study inna university?”

  “Cinema Studies.”

  “‘Cinema Studies’?” She twists her mouth as she repeats those words back to me, like she’s trying to taste each letter, extract some significance. I can’t help but picture her enduring the work she used to do, how for years, she’d wake up in the wee hours of the morning to clean bedpans and turn sheets, gritting her teeth when those she looked after forgot we were in the millennium and called her nigger girl and black bitch. I clear my throat loudly.

  “Tell me about the dream, Nana.”

  “Yuh nuh care about dream. You are a Canadian girl,” she says, putting on an accent and laughing to herself.

  “I still know to come when called about a dream.”

  She stares at me intently and then begins to speak slowly, her voice clear with purpose. “I dream about hands, hands held up to some woman’s mouth. And when she take way them hands, all her teeth just crumbled away, yuh understand? I take few, few steps back to see who the woman was. The woman’s face ah look like Eloise.”

&
nbsp; I take a sip of the soda and try to look ponderous. Losing dream teeth, I know, is a bad sign. “Mom will probably think a duppy is following her,” I say.

  “Eh-eh, nuh make light of such things, Kara. Duppy them evil spirit, drive yuh crazy, make yuh mad, tear up yuh whole life.”

  “You told me this when you told me about the duppy tree when I was small.”

  “Never too old for lessons. Duppies have been around long before yuh were born, long before any of us.”

  “That’s what Mom says,” I say.

  Nana lets air out of her mouth like a whistle. “Yuh mother is right about some things.”

  * * *

  6.

  I was going into my first year of high school when my mother told me we would be living with Nana. It was a decision I’d known about before she told me, a favour I’d overheard her ask my grandmother during Christmas dinner. But it wasn’t until May, until a week before we had to make the move, that she felt like cluing me in.

  I got home from school, and she told me we were going out. Any restaurant I wanted. I knew then that she was warming up for upsetting me. She waited until I took a bite out of my fifteen-dollar hamburger and then said it.

  “We’ll be living with Nana for a while.”

  I drank all of the Coke in my glass in an attempt to plan my reaction but all I could think to say was, “Why?”

  “Because we need to.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I said so.” She took a sip of the martini she’d ordered. “Now stop talking and eat.”

  It took us three sleepless nights to move all of our things out of the apartment on Belgravia. We shoved our furniture into Nana’s garage and brought our clothes into the house. I even got to bring the little TV my mother had bought me for Christmas when I was eight.

  It was fine at first, almost perfect. Nana seemed glad to have someone to cook for every day since my grandfather was ghosting again, only dropping by every once in a while for a meal and late-night company. Plantain and eggs for breakfast. Curry goat and rice and peas for dinner. She even packed my lunches: real ham and turkey sandwiches on baguettes from the bakery just by the men’s clothing boutique.