Frying Plantain

  It was a month into our move that things started to turn. The changes were gradual but they weren’t subtle. Nights Nana would come home and grumble about our presence, how we upset her routine, the way she set up the kitchen. My mother and I spent more and more time in our bedroom, only leaving it to use the bathroom and take showers. Sometimes we’d stay out past midnight, driving to the suburbs, looking at the square houses with their square lawns and sprinkler systems, hoping Nana would have wiped herself out and gone to bed by the time we got back to the house.

  The fights began in September, when school started up again. One morning I was too tired to eat breakfast and I fell asleep at the table. The night before, Nana had come home to find a few grains of rice on the kitchen counter and she just lost it: she clattered pots and pans, banged on the walls, vacuumed right by our bedroom door, bellowed insults disguised as hymns.

  “I invite them inna my house and I get rice inna my kitchen! All of them MESSY! All of them STINK! Canna even pick up after themselves! Lord have mercy! What did I do fi deserve this?”

  By the time she’d fallen silent, there was an hour left until I had to wake up for school and my mother for work. At the table, when I could hardly lift up my head, my mother slammed the cereal box down and wrenched open Nana’s door.

  “My daughter can’t stay awake long enough to eat her breakfast.”

  “Yuh canna just come inna my room —”

  “My daughter can’t —”

  “Well yuh canna just leave messes inna mi house! Yuh a nasty woman!”

  “And you’re crazy! I mean it, you’re sick!”

  My mother didn’t hide anymore after that. Every time Nana started to complain she matched her, insult for insult. Yell for yell. Slammed-down pan for slammed-down pan. I learned to sleep lightly, enough to feel rested and enough to hear what was going on in the living room to make sure that, for all their talk, nothing violent actually happened.

  One night my mother and I had been out driving until three in the morning only to find the door chained when we got back.

  “Maybe she thought we wouldn’t be coming back tonight?”

  She didn’t respond. She didn’t even look at me. She jabbed her finger into the doorbell, making one long continuous ring, until the lights came on and we saw Nana moving toward us through the small space of the semi-open door.

  “Get off mi porch,” she said. “I don’t want yuh here. I canna take it no more! Yuh nuh follow my rules! Yuh bedroom messy! Mi can smell the Macdonal’ yuh eat inna yuh room!”

  “Why are you in our bedroom?”

  “This is my house! I go where I want fi go!”

  “It’s three in the morning, where are we supposed to go?”

  “I nuh care!” Nana tried to close the door all the way but my mother pushed against it to keep it open and then rammed through it with her shoulder, breaking off the copper chain. I didn’t dare follow her inside the house or try to stop her from hurtling the dishes and tea sets onto the floor, from tearing down the paintings on the walls, from tracking dirt onto the carpets, smudging it in with the heel of her pumps.

  I stood on the stoop and watched, holding back tears, knowing she’d scream at me later if she caught me crying. We left only when Nana threatened to call the police. I didn’t speak for the rest of the night; my mother’s rage ran deep and possessed her for long periods of time, and I knew from experience that silence was the best way to maintain peace.

  The next day was Saturday, so I went back to Nana’s early in the morning to beg her to put us up for one more week.

  “Just until we get an apartment,” I said.

  She stopped scrubbing the carpet and turned to look at me, slowly getting off her hands and knees. “After she come inna mi house and mash up everything?”

  “Just one week.”

  “Kara, I said no!”

  “We slept in our car last night. Can you please just do this for me?”

  She finally picked up a bottle of dish detergent and then turned around and looked at me. “Yuh have one week. One week and yuh go.”

  “Thank you.”

  * * *

  7.

  It’s late in the afternoon. A little after five thirty. Nana has begun seasoning a chicken for tomorrow, Sunday, night. Right now she’s sweeping in the kitchen even though there’s nothing on the floor to sweep. Details like that don’t matter to her, though. Something always needs cleaning. Something always needs polishing. It made me tense as a child — watching her create work for herself, when she saw it as keeping the Devil at bay.

  “I should get going,” I say.

  “Yuh haffi go already?”

  “It’s getting late.”

  She stops sweeping, leans the broom against the counter, and walks up to me. “Have some bun and cheese before yuh leave.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I say, standing up and heading toward the foyer. “I don’t really feel for it.”

  “Well how about some ice cream? I know yuh always want chocolate ice cream and I have some in the freezer somewhere.”

  “I’m actually pretty full.”

  “Yes, I know how yuh get full easy. Let mi make some mint tea. It will help sekkle yuh stomach.”

  “I don’t like tea.”

  “I know that but —”

  “Nana!” I say. “I just want to go home, okay?”

  There’s a pause and for a second I think she might yell, slap me even and run the risk of dealing with my mother, but she just clears her throat and walks back into the kitchen.

  “Yes, yuh have a long way back home.”

  She turns to the dishwasher and opens its door, pulling out the racks; they’re filled with plastic bags and empty yogurt cups. I don’t think she’s ever used it to wash dishes. She fills a couple of the yogurt cups with the rest of the plantain and some leftover oxtail and rice from the fridge, putting everything in a yellow No Frills bag.

  “Take this home and share it with yuh mother.”

  “Okay,” I say quietly, taking the bag from her. “I will.”

  “A’right, then.”

  She stands on the threshold between the kitchen and the foyer and watches as I put on my sandals. My eyes land on a painting, a colourful print of a Jamaican marketplace by the coast, slightly, almost barely, torn; a near-casualty of that night.

  “Make sure yuh share that, nuh,” says Nana.

  I nod my head and tighten my grip on the No Frills bag, feeling the weight of the margarine containers and yogurt cups, remembering the weight of all of the leftovers she’d given me throughout the years. I smile slightly and turn toward the door. “Thank you for the food, Nana.”

  Acknowledgements

  There were many times in the years it took to write this collection that I thought it would never get published, that I had accumulated a massive amount of student debt in the pursuit of a goal I would never achieve, that I was a fraud to call myself a “writer.” I would like to thank all of the people who were instrumental in making my first book a reality (buckle in, it’s a long list).

  Thank you to House of Anansi for giving this first-timer such an incredible publishing experience, for being approachable and accessible and sensitive to my artistic choices. In relation, I would like to express my gratitude to Amelia Spedaliere, who had such passionate faith in my manuscript and who encouraged me to take my time to develop it into the collection it is now before resubmitting it for consideration.

  I would like to thank my agent, Amy Tompkins, for taking a chance on an unknown writer with a short story collection (not a novel!), and for being my champion.

  Thank you to my editor, Melanie Little, for taking the time to really understand my work, for being receptive but not complacent, for giving me thoughtful and painstaking comments.

  In my experience, having supportive, talented, and chal
lenging teachers and instructors is integral to artistic growth, so I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the ones who contributed to mine.

  Thank you, Ibi Kaslik, my first mentor, for encouraging me to go back to my collection when I had nearly given up on it, for being the first one to say, “I want to see this in a bookstore.” To George Elliott Clarke, an overwhelmingly generous adviser, thank you for providing instruction that still stays with me whenever I write, and thank you for never hesitating to help me advance, whether it’s through a reference letter or advice.

  I would like to thank the instructors I had while attending Columbia University. Thank you to Alana Newhouse, whose patience and ability to ask the right questions encouraged me to be more vulnerable on the page; to Paul Beatty, whose critical eye and willingness to discuss creative fears and intentions helped me find my voice; and to Victor Lavalle, who provided blunt and uncompromising discussions about my work that led me to overcome barriers I never knew I had.

  I would also like to thank Janice Galloway and Greg Hollingshead. Without their guidance, this collection would have no message.

  Of course, thank you to the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council for providing funding that allowed me the necessary time to edit my work.

  I would be remiss not to thank my employers at Diaspora Dialogues and Avana Capital, Helen Walsh and Vali Bennett, respectively, for being accommodating and understanding of a writer’s creative needs. Thank you for never making me choose between doing what’s best for me as a writer and what’s best for me as a person who needs a paycheque for general life things like food.

  To my grandmother, Evelyn, thank you for your assistance throughout my schooling and for your faith in my talent.

  Finally, I would like to thank my mother: my number one fan, my very first reader. Thank you for your unwavering support of my ambition, for never wanting me to be anything other than what I am. Thank you for demanding excellence from me and for doing everything you could to help turn my passion into an actuality, from getting me a rhyming dictionary when I wrote songs and poems in junior high to telling me about creative writing classes and workshops to take in undergrad. I am forever grateful.

  © Michele Comeau

  ZALIKA REID-BENTA is a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared on CBC Books, in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, and in Apogee Journal. In 2011, George Elliott Clarke recommended her as a “Writer to Watch.” She received a Master of Fine Arts in fiction from Columbia University in 2014 and is an alumna of the 2017 Banff Centre Writing Studio. She is currently working on a young-adult fantasy novel, drawing inspiration from Jamaican folklore and Akan spirituality.

  About the Publisher

  HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS was founded in 1967 by writers Dennis Lee and David Godfrey. Anansi started as a small press with a mandate to publish Canadian writers, and quickly gained attention for publishing authors such as Margaret Atwood, Matt Cohen, Michael Ondaatje, and Erín Moure, as well as George Grant and Northrop Frye. French-Canadian works in translation have always been an important part of the list, and prominent Anansi authors in translation include Roch Carrier, Marie-Claire Blais, Anne Hébert, and France Daigle. Today, the company specializes in finding and developing writers of literary fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction, including Katherena Vermette, Lisa Moore, Patrick deWitt, Tanya Talaga, Djamila Ibrahim, Kathleen Winter, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and in maintaining the culturally significant backlist that has accumulated in the decades since the house was founded.