Death Register E-Book

Dwight Thompson

• Herausgeber: Peepal Tree Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 480

Beschreibung

Set during the politically turbulent times of 90s Jamaica, Death Register is a challenging and moving coming of age story. It uncovers the extreme nature of Jamaican homophobia and explores its devastating effects on a group of high school boys in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Leseprobe

For my son, Julian Ryo,

I truly hope you find your place in this world

DWIGHT THOMPSON

DEATH REGISTER

First published in Great Britain in 2018

Peepal Tree Press Ltd

17 King’s Avenue

Leeds LS6 1QS

England

https://www.peepaltreepress.com/home

https://www.facebook.com/peepaltreepress

https://twitter.com/peepaltreepress

© 2018 Dwight Thompson

ISBN Print: 9781845234072

ISBN Epub: 9781845234089

ISBN Mobi: 9781845234096

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be

reproduced or transmitted in any form

without permission

CONTENTS

PART I: DEPARTURE

PART II: THE CITY STIRS – PAPA’S REQUIEM

CHAPTER 1 – MONTEGO BAY PASTORAL

CHAPTER 2 – LADOO’S LEGACY, PLUS THE DELPHONIC SPLIFF

CHAPTER 3 – BURNING OF THE SHELLS

CHAPTER 4 – THE SUGAR NAVEL PILGRIMAGE

CHAPTER 5 – MARZIPAN

CHAPTER 6 – MARZIPAN II

CHAPTER 7 – WARRIOR DANCE

CHAPTER 8 – THE FULLERITES! THE FULLERITES ARE COMING.

CHAPTER 9 – THE CITY AWAKES!

CHAPTER 10 – A PEEP THROUGH THE CURTAIN. FRESH AIR AT LAST!

CHAPTER 11 – BOGUE BOY

CHAPTER 12 – MAN OVERBOARD.

CHAPTER 13 – THE BAILEY HOUSE TRIAL

CHAPTER 14 – THE CONFRONTATION

CHAPTER 15 – THE RIOTS

CHAPTER 16 – END GAME

CHAPTER 17 – FINAL MOVEMENT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PART I

DEPARTURE

I sat at the kitchen table watching Mama make duckanoo. I had cut banana leaves that morning and was stripping the husk into long thin strands for her to tie the parcels with, before she dropped them into boiling water to cook.

Recipe for Revenge: Ingredients

225g cassava flour

125g coconut (dried or shredded)

300ml fresh milk

55g raisins

30g melted butter (avoid margarine!)

60g brown sugar

4-5 tablespoons water

¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg

½ teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mama made her duckanoo with cassava flour rather than plain flour; that way it was more glutinous, more pudding than cake. As it boiled, the sugar would leave the jellied centre to combine with the natural sugar of the cassava, then rise to the surface of the glazed skin, absorbing a tinge of bitterness from the banana leaves that balanced the flavour and provided a distinct fragrance. It was so succulent that even fresh out of the pot, when the steaming mixture stuck to the roof of your mouth and felt as if it would melt your gums, you tolerated the pain just to savour the unadulterated sweetness before the cake cooled and solidified.

Directions

After blending the coconut and milk till smooth, she combined it with the flour and stirred in the other ingredients. Then, she spooned the mixture onto banana-leaf squares (made pliable by dipping them into boiling water), tied them snugly with the husk strips, and dropped them into the pot. Preparation Time: 40-60 mins. Servings: 5-6. Serve warm.

“The raisins, Mama. You forgot the raisins!”

“It’s sweet enough!” she snapped. “You tryin’ to sick yourself?”

“Then why you make me buy them?”

She ignored me. I sighed, but I couldn’t be angry, not when my feelings for her were so acute. But was it fear of leaving behind a familiar life rather than just leaving her protection?

“You lucky,” she said, her back turned to me at the stove. “Let’s see who goin’ to fuss over you when you go to Kingston. Them don’t know the meaning of sincerity. If you ask for a drink o’ water they serve you in a plastic cup, smile in your face, then throw it away. That’s what passes for hospitality. An’ they consider themselves civilised.”

She said the word ‘civilised’ so that it came out as a long contemptuous hiss.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I’d rather drink from a plastic cup than from a glass everybody else spit in. An’ at least they pay you the courtesy of a smile.”

She took my bait, thumping the kitchen counter in exasperation. “Chauncey, that’s not the point. If you keep givin’ people fake smiles all your life is whose jaws hurting? Who plays the hypocrite is the same one who suffers, nobody else.”

She spoke to the pot as she stirred. “…They don’t go to the beach to swim, they go to ‘lime’ – ’cause everybody speakin’ like Trinidadians these days. They don’t eat bulla cake with avocado they eat it with cheddar cheese…”

“How you know so much ’bout Kingstonians?”

“Don’t worry yourself ’bout that. An’ you won’t believe what Sheila tell me the other day.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think I will.”

“You remember that gentleman who promise to rent him the shop space downtown? Well, he’s a Kingstonian. He told Sheila that before he start sellin’ property, he used to sell crockery. An’ he had a motto for his store: If you break it, you buy it. A man impregnate his teenage daughter, an’ when she tell him who the father was he pack her bags an’ march her straight to the man’s house an’ drop her off on his doorstep. He tell the man: ‘If you break it, you buy it,’ then left. Now you tell me if those people normal. Cold even to their own kin.”

I laughed, flipping through the pages of an old notebook as I sorted through a box I was packing.

“You free to shop around,” she said. “You can look, you can touch, you can even sample. But anyone you break, make sure she worth buyin.’ You hear me, bwoy?”

I feigned deafness.

“You hear me?” she said louder.

“Yes, ma’am. But if I break anybody I can’t afford, can I send you the bill?”

“Don’t get saucy.”

Then she asked, “Harry serious ’bout that girl?”

“Harry…? Harry says she’s pregnant. But then the next word out of his mouth was ‘paternity test’.”

Mama said, “Ugh!” and shook her head. “You jus’ watch yourself… dem college girls experienced.”

(She meant they were sex-crazed).

“Dem family rich, yours isn’t. You mess up an’ you lan’ right back in Mobay on your backside; no second chance!”

“You don’t have to worry ’bout girl makin’ baby.” I wasn’t coming back.

She gave me a strange look. “What you mean by that?”

I shrugged.

This was the closest we’d ever come to discussing the birds and the bees. I wish I’d provoked her more but my concentration was divided. I was looking through the notebook. Yet I wanted to talk, wanted her to know what I felt, and my yearning for her sharpened when she bent over me to give me a glass of prune juice. I wanted to catch the end of her skirt, the way I would as a child, sitting on the sofa sucking my lip and playing with my belly-button.

“How Sanjay gettin’ on?”

I was glad for the question because I had a joke to share. “He workin’ by the city centre in his family’s shop. Harry said when he start workin’ by the courthouse, he and Sanjay used to meet for lunch everyday. At first when he went by the shop, Sanjay’s uncle would smile an’ slap his back an’ say, ‘Harry… that’s a Hindu name, you know. Say hi to Vice-Principal Glenn for me.’ But by the secon’ week, his uncles started showin’ Harry bad face. Sanjay start actin’ sulky. Then Harry realise that goin’ out for lunch was a foreign concept to them. They work right roun’ the clock. Monday, when Harry call on him, Sanjay say, ‘Harry, what you want?’ The Tuesday he say, ‘Harry, what you want to buy?’”

“Kiss me neck!” Mama exclaimed softly, and turned her face away and laughed. “Is lie you tellin’ on de poor bwoy. You been to see him before he goes back to Miami?”

“I went to his house yesterday. He said he’s had enough of college, he not goin’ back, his place is in the duty-free shop. Him already gettin’ that money-hungry Hindu look in his face – with the black teabags under his eyes an’ the long nasty nose hairs.”

“Chauncey, you take it too far.” Her tone had hardened. “Sanjay should know. He was always de level-headed one. You an’ Harry now… mercy… when de two o’ you lick head, what oonuh won’t do, Diego Tobago ain’t invent. So all t’ings considered, I glad both o’ you separatin’, an dis is a fair warnin’. I takin’ dis las’ chance to try an’ call yuh to yuh senses. Foolish dawg grin him teet’ at bulldog an’ bark after flyin’ bird, an’ if yuh play de foolish dawg when yuh leave here, kindly remember – yuh don’t have a kennel to come back to.” She started juicing the soursop, the milk flowing through her thin brown fingers.

“This prune juice is very good.” She seemed pleased to hear it. I smiled and smacked my lips. When she turned her attention back to juicing, I said, “Mama…”

“Yes, dear.”

“Why yuh leggo dat gardener so quickly? Him do somet’ing wrong?”

“Is a funny t’ing; he was so nice an’ polite in de beginnin’, then Tuesday I serve him lunch on de verandah an’ I ask what him like to do – you know – jus’ makin’ small talk. Him say fishin.’ Fair enough. Then de next day him say him have an album to show me. I say fine, ’cause I feel it mus’ be an album wid pictures of his family. Only fe de man show me dis album full o’ dead fish!”

I did a spit-take, the juice spilling through the gap in my front teeth. Mama’s surprise at the unexpected grimness still animated her face. She looked at me and I could see she wanted to laugh too, but didn’t. “Yuh laughin’, Chauncey, but it ain’t funny. Wha’ kinda man keeps an album of fish him catch? Not someone wid all dem screws in place you hear me. I get de feelin’ right there I had to fire him.”

“A death register,” I said, “That’s what that album was… Writing about Tristan often feels like that.”

She ignored my comment, pressing her thin fingers through the foaming white soursop pulp. It was still too hard for her to talk about him. No matter how much I tried to coax her into conversation to court her comfort, she denied it. “You can resist talkin’ ’bout Tristan all yuh want, but I’ll keep sendin’ down my bucket till something comes up!” Sometimes, when I spoke to her without thinking, she would give me a strange look as if I weren’t her own. I knew it was my corruption she saw, but pretended otherwise. Her shoulders jerked, but she didn’t respond.

She must have felt my eyes lingering on her, on her long hair bundled under a yam-yellow head-wrap. All the children had her hair, though not as straight; theirs was a wavy strain, but they all had her large, deep-set eyes and prominent brow bone. Aunt Girlie had her pale brown skin. Ma turned and caught the look of longing in my face and it pleased her. I dropped my eyes, embarrassed. Her powers renewed, she said casually, “I go pack some goggle-eye fish so you can have something to eat on your first night.”

“But Mama, it will smell! And why you put that plaque of Barnett Estate in me bag? Saul Marzouca don’t know me any different from his horses, yet I suppose to hang a picture of his mansion and estate…”

“Shut your face! What so wrong if I put few souvenirs in your bag?” This quiet aggressiveness would strike fear in us as children –Tristan and I – because it signalled the start of a beating, but now I knew it was because of her sorrow over my leaving. She raised her voice for the neighbours’ benefit. “Ever since you know you leavin’, you fulla big chat, as if you already out the door, but as long as you under this roof, you’re my child. I don’t care how old you be, I don’t care what you doin’ outta street either, you hear me? An’ don’t mind what dem others doin’ too; you ain’t man yet! You start smellin’ yourself – I know – but don’t pass your place with me – don’t do it! – an’ you kindly tell your combolo that once I’m alive you have to respect me! You know I don’t take backchat from pitney, an’ when you see dem formin’ fool or playin’ man, tell them no. Sorry, you can’t play that game with me ’cause I ain’t that sorta woman no how, you hear me? You not out the door yet! You have to treat me with respect! An’ don’t think you too tall for me to drag your pants down an’ give you a good soundin’ out.”

I couldn’t help smiling at the prospect of her attempting to beat me; it had been so long since she threatened to do this, and her euphemism – “soundin’ out” – struck an absurd note. She caught the amusement in my face.

“What yuh smilin’ for? You think I makin’ fun?”

“I know you not makin’ fun, Mama.”

She sighed and tossed her head. “But what you really take me for though, eh?” This question, I knew better than to answer. I closed the notebook and kept my eyes on her, never sure she wouldn’t reach for something to fling at my head. “You think I would allow you to leave here without packing your supper – never mind souvenirs – but without supper, your first night in a strange place? You were always a cold, unfeelin’ child, Chauncey, never thinkin’ one tot ’bout anybody but yourself. How yuh come so? Who yuh take dat coldness from?”

“I feel all right… I feel enough.”

“Wha’ kinda writer you goin’ to be when you so selfish, when you never take into account other people’s feelings? That girl Marzipan told me that you so strange you refuse to even take her to the cinema when you go to see a film.”

“I don’t read a book with anyone, so why should I watch a movie with anyone. It’s difficult to find the concentration and quiet I need to figure out why the picture is affecting me.”

“That’s it right there! That tone – that self-serving tone! An’ you treat your family no different! If me or Girlie clean your room and misplace anyt’ing you writin’, you act as cold as ice to everybody in de house for days. An’ every time you writin’ and I call you for dinner, you t’ink I don’t hear you suckin’ your teeth. You ever t’ink how it make me feel to hear that? When all I tryin’ to do is feed you, yet have to endure your scornful nature, as if I deprivin’ you of somethin’, as if I drivin’ a wedge between you an’ your…”

This was too much. My head was so hot I could see her lips moving but couldn’t hear the words anymore. I said, “Why you puttin’ all this on me? You never know how much it hurt to be always worrying ’bout how what I say or do will make you feel. Is like I wearin’ a pair of shoes that always squeezin’ but can never take them off.”

“Is what you not saying? Tell me more.”

I was dying to say a lot more, but I didn’t trust myself to speak because I feared I would lose control and say something cutting, but the words tumbled out anyway. “When I writing…” I began, but stopped. “When I’m writing – is the only time I get to be myself! Why you tryin’ to make me feel bad about it?”

Now she watched me with a mute restraint I couldn’t bear.

“It’s a pity,” she said dolefully, “that’s probably your best self…”

Fire and ice were inside me. The tears slipped down my face. I was powerless to stop them. “I love you, Mama… don’t you know?”

She watched me warily. “You’ve spoken the truth and let’s leave it at that. Don’t spoil it by pretendin’ those tears are for me.”

I went back to my reading. In the silence the tension between us eased. I was looking over some of my older stories, reading with tightness in my stomach. In some I’d placed myself at a safe distance from what I wrote, as if afraid that if I got too close I would touch my true self buried beneath the words. At the back of the book, I saw the draft I’d jotted that day after coming home from Sugar Navel and quarrelling with Tristan. I reread the working title: A release is coming! The stone is being rolled away. I put the notebook aside, I didn’t have to read beyond that; the story came quickly to memory, as did his face. I got up and went to the fridge for ice cubes for my glass. “Mama, how long before the cakes finish?”

“’Bout twenty minutes, love.”

Everyone else was at work and the house was quiet, save for the gurgling of the pot on the stove and the yard fowls making a racket on the water tank outside, fighting over hog plums that dropped like hard little green stones onto the tank’s roof. The fowls had a clever method of consuming them; they pecked at the unyielding flesh, then left the bruised fruit to spoil from exposure; later they returned to reap the worms from the rotting pulp.

Looking through the window, Mama said, “Those fowls don’t scratch dirt anymore like normal birds, but gone all the way up on the tank.”

“They don’t roost in trees anymore either,” I said. “They sleepin’ in Papa’s old couch in the garage. The whole room stink o’ fowl mess. Sheila should take them to the farm.” I sat back at the table, passing a hand over the notebook’s back page, yellowed and curling, its ink fading, yet the words still disturbing. Where was my release from the demons of the past. I knew now, more than ever, that leaving everything behind wasn’t progress. Walking away wasn’t freedom. I’d always carry the past inside me, my affairs far from settled.

Mama opened the pot and tested the duckanoos with the aluminium spoon. “Won’t be long now. You think they know how to turn a good duckanoo in Kingston, Chauncey?”

“I suppose they manage.”

“Manage?”

Aunt Girlie had walked in and winked at me. “What Chauncey means, Mama, is the men there don’t mind their women baking right off the back of a cake box.”

“Ugh!”

I went out on the porch and opened a more recent notebook.

Red Dragon

I ordered two prostitutes. I told the manager I was going away and wanted a last hoorah. He said, “You always goin’ off. Last week it was the army, the week before it was Canada, and the week before that it was to heaven.” He seized my hand and shook it vigorously while eying my pool-cue case. “Don’t take it so serious, man, is likkle joke I runnin’. Yuh cock tough like a wall in your pants tonight, eh. No worries. We soon tek care o’ dat. But you see, I don’t want any Missa Man comin’ in here thinkin’ he can order me around jus’ because we have a passin’ acquaintance.”

“Familiarity breeds contempt,” I said. “I suppose this time when I leave I should stay away for good.”

He ignored this and said, “I have the perfect girl for you. They call her Forget-me-not.” He beckoned behind him with his fat black fingers, but the girls were already traipsing round the lounge in their nightgowns and stilettos to see who had come in.

I rubbed my palms together. “Now it’s time for bartering, that tugo-war I can never seem to win. For the umpteenth time, when you goin’ to have a discount day? You know… like they do at the cineplex: Monday is Couples Day, Tuesdays Ladies’ Day and Fridays Mens’ Day and 30% percent off.”

He replied as if scandalised: “But see here! Every day is Mens’ Day here. I jus’ too modest to advertise the discount.” He clapped his hands and called, “Forget-me-not!” A slender, sweet-faced girl with long curls stepped from behind a beige partition, tall and shapely, with bow legs and a thigh gap that stretched the sheer fabric of her nightie over her wide hips. She held her hands behind her as she sauntered up the steps, as shiny as a new penny. The other girls dawdled back to the velvet settees and pool tables.

He said out of the side of his mouth, “You see how she walks on the outsides of her feet? Never marry a girl like that; she’ll ruin a pair of shoes every month.” Then he looked me in the eye. “Now that’s the glow I like to see on a man’s face. It give me a great feeling, bwoy. Have fun.”

The girl was smiling invitingly, with the lush light of the neon RED STRIPE BEER sign shining through the window behind her and falling on her head and shoulders. We made our way down the steps to a room of her choice. She slipped out of her nightgown, lit me a Matterhorn, and lay on my arm while I smoked, staring at the ceiling. “How do you like it here?” I said. She said quietly, “I live in St James before – I’m no stranger to this place. But I spend most o’ me life in St Ann. I only come back here two weeks ago to start workin.’ I lef’ me daughter with me family, an’ told me mother I goin’ to the Caymans to work in the service industry.” She smiled at her joke and snuggled up to my chest. When I laughed, she looked up and said, “What’s so funny?” “You wouldn’t want to hear.” “Try me.” I put out the cigarette and eased up on my elbow. “OK, when Vidia Naipaul, my favourite writer, was young, looking for a room to rent in London, he rang at a house advertising a vacancy and a woman said over the intercom, ‘Are you black?’ And Naipaul answered, ‘Hopelessly.’ I watched her face for a response. “See, now you’ve embarrassed me by making me tell you an unfunny joke.” She said quickly, “No no – I like it.” Her manner was calm and graceful. I placed my hand along the gentle rise of her hip then stroked her cheek and held her chin and stared into her eyes. The smile came very easily to her face. I kissed her forehead: “Now ask me.” “Ask you what?” “If I’m black.” “But I can see that you are.” “Yes, but can you really see me?” “What do you mean?” “Just as I said, can you really see me?” “You’re lying right beside me.” “Yes, but can you see me?” She started getting up. I grabbed her wrist. She flounced and snapped, “Leggo me bloodclaat hand! Me nuh ina de kinky fuckery wid yuh today.”

She got up and pulled on her nightgown, her eyes flat and dark, her mouth jutting with hostility. I jumped up and said to her as she stood at the door, “You know what I want, and I’ll pay good money for it.” She looked at my fingernail prints in her wrist. I could see her considering, hesitating. I hurried over to her and held her slender smooth elbow and gently led her back to the bed. As she undressed, I opened the pool-cue case and took out the cane. She flinched at the sight, before she started acting lively and curious. Grinning, she took it from me and flexed it. She smiled wryly at the inscription: The Meat Inspector. She narrowed her eyes in sly amusement. “So you come to the meat shop, nuh true?” “I didn’t write that.” Still looking it over, she asked, “Who’s Oswald Harding?” “My old master. This is a memento, the masters traditionally break their canes and offer the pieces to their favourite students after graduation as a parting gift. Either I was the only student he ever fancied or I suspect he knew I needed this one whole.” She looked up at me. “You’re a Chester boy aren’t you? You missing it?” “No. Today you’re the student and I’m the master. Take off your panties and lie on your stomach.” She hesitated, looked at the other side of the cane, at the fresh inscription I had written only that morning. The Red Dragon. She seemed on the verge of comment but thought better of it. Instead, she took off her panties and sat with her arms back and her legs open, in a last ditch effort to entice me away from my intentions; her pubic hair was waxed to a landing strip above her neat pink slit, the centre wet and shiny. She held my gaze and parted her legs more, but I insisted firmly, “On your stomach.” She obeyed reluctantly. I said, “Well, since you’re freshly returned to St James, let’s have a civics test.” She turned her head to one side. “What’s the passing grade?” “Six out of ten questions. And for every wrong answer, there’s a penalty.” With the first strike she made a brief howl like an animal that had had its throat slit, with the second wrong answer, and the second strike, she whimpered and bit the pillow and blood flushed her shapely buttocks, the flesh quivering with her slight shudders. “Next question, who’s the patron saint of Montego Bay?” But instead of answering, she spoke to herself in a faraway voice, as if defying me, “Yes, Peaches girl…” With the third strike she made a sharp intake of breath and clenched her buttocks, when she released them, exhaling tremulously, there was a gush and dark wetness spread on the sheet below her thighs. “Yes Peaches…” she said again after the fourth strike, clutching the sheets and speaking in the same detached voice, “Mommy earnin’ har money girl…” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand after the fifth wrong answer, and the remark that rose to my lips was the same one the good deacon had used when I watched him punishing Tristan that afternoon with the fan-belt. “You coulda cry till your tears touch the sea…” I spat it out like poison, like the Red Dragon’s venom, and the cane came down.

I closed the notebook, went back in and said, “Mama, how Brother Mac doin’ these days?”

“Not so good,” she said. “They stabilise the sugar, but he lost the left foot. They release him from the hospital, though. He’s at home resting. But they have to keep an eye on his circulation. Poor soul. Tess beside herself ’cause he won’t eat a thing. I made de prune juice for Deacon Mac. It’s good for the sugar. Would you mind takin’ it over to the house.”

As Mama spoke, her hands made aimless circles across her apron. I knew she was thinking of Papa. She tested the duckanoos again and this time was satisfied they were ready. Lifting them carefully from the pot with the spoon, she laid them out in a wooden basin on the table. The steam rose thick and watered my eyes. The banana leaves, moist, dark and soft from simmering, were murderously hot. I was eager to tear them open and ravage the deep-blue sweetness they protected. But I’d wait. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll take it over to the house.”

“You’re a dear,” she said, smiling at me. “I’ll keep the duckanoos warm in the oven till you get back.”

“I think I’ll take some with me to eat on the way. I too hungry to wait.”

“All right, I’ll put a few in the bag with the juice jug.”

It was almost noon. The day was cool despite the sun’s glare. The fowls kept up their racket but the falling fruit had been forgotten; now they squawked and fought senselessly. Mama shaded her eyes to look at them. “You know,” she said. “It’s a bad thing to say, but I wish the concrete slab would get hot enough to scorch their little feet so they would remember themselves. God forgive me.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I think we’re allowed at least one evil thought per day. It feels good to break a rule every now and then.”

“Don’t be too late in comin’ back.” If I were still a child, she would have finished with: “’Cause the Devil makes his soup from children’s bones.” But she didn’t have to worry anymore. I had watched the Devil make his soup, and drank it.

Serving 1

When I got to their house, Sister Mac was sweeping the verandah. She looked hard before she recognised me, then mumbled for me to enter. It had been over ten years since I’d last visited. Whenever Papa needed sawdust, I’d find some excuse to get out of the errand. But the yard was the same as I’d remembered – flat, treeless, hot – except the woodwork shop at the side of the house had been torn down. I climbed the steps, smelling the wax on the red verandah tiles. Sister Mac held a mop and had a red handkerchief tied over her nose. She was a small, sad-looking woman, undemonstrative, drawing neither attention nor concern. But did she now wear the handkerchief to mask her grief? She acknowledged my greeting, took the bag and thanked me, then led me through the dimly-lit house, asking after my family. My heart hammered as I approached the door. The homily above it said:

WE’RE ALL PUTTY IN THE MASTER’S HANDS

We entered a large, well-ventilated back room that had been converted into a sickroom. His bed was positioned near a doublesided jalousie window. He had heard us coming and was sitting up in bed, with a pretence of jauntiness. He looked weak and wasted, his body swallowed up by his pyjamas, a tangle of sheets covering him from the waist down. He had lost most of his hair and handsomeness; his eyes looked big and bright in his emaciated face; they still had their cunning energy. There was a halffilled glass of pulpy liquid that looked like coconut water on the bedside table. I stood at the foot of the bed, waiting for him to recognise me. The odour of dried sweat and stale urine sharpened; a chamber pot peeping out from under the bed needed emptying. I wished I could see the amputated foot. He caught my eyes moving over his body. I offered a vague smile. He wagged his head and grinned, his lips loose and wet. “Chauncey, you come to look at the half-dead.” His wife winced when he said this; she fussed with the window slats, regulating the sunlight falling across the bed.

“Miss Phyllis made prune juice for you,” she said, her voice sullen and strange below the handkerchief. “Chauncey was kind enough to bring it.” I had taken the duckanoos from the bag and stashed them in my pockets.

“Was he?” Brother Mac said, watching my face. “And how is your grandmother, son?”

“Fine, Deacon Mac. She sends her love. And said to tell you you’re always in her prayers.”

“She’s too kind. Tell her I appreciate that.”

Sister Mac brightened, pleased at his change in tone. She removed her handkerchief and used it to dab the perspiration on his forehead. “Chauncey leavin’ soon for college, Delroy. Next time you see him he’ll be a big shot lawyer.”

Brother Mac’s eyes popped. “What yuh saying! Congrats, man.” He jerked back in annoyance from his wife’s touch and swivelled his head towards the bedside table; the papery skin over his neck looked as if it would snap with the effort. “Tess, where my glasses? Why you keep mislayin’ me t’ings, woman? Why your hands so light?”

Sister Mac searched while he kept up a steady stream of nagging, contempt curling his lips. She found the glasses behind his pillow. He snatched them from her hands, put them on and leaned against the headboard. “There,” he said smiling, “now let me take a good look at Lawyer Knuckle before he leaves Anchovy. The likes of us may never see you again after you open your big firm in Kingston, eh. Mas’ Clarence would be proud. He had such high hopes for you. And what a strapping young man you’ve become.”

“You want anything to drink, Chauncey?”

“No thanks, Sister Mac.”

“Get him something all the same,” he barked.

“No,” I said. “I’m really quite all right.”

Sister Mac re-tied the handkerchief over her face and gently lifted the chamber pot. The stench swirled. He scowled at her retreat. “You clean this house top to bottom, from mornin’ to night, and the dust killin’ me faster than this damn diabetes.” He reached for the coconut water on the bedside table, but when he lifted the glass he grimaced. “I go ask a favour of you, son. Can you buy me a small bottle of Gilbey’s down Reds’s supermarket.” He rubbed his wrist and groaned. “When the joints get stiff and sore like this, only a little gin can soothe them. Can you do that for an old man?”

“Mind you fixin’ to make yourself a cocktail eh, nuh, Deacon Mac.”

He appreciated the joke. He laughed and hummed the calypso, ‘Gin and coconut water… cannot get in America’, and raised his glass. “Who knows?” he said. “I might get careless and add a few drops. Could you blame me? A man in my position deserves some indulgence.” The cunning energy was bringing the colour back to his face. “And what’s that smellin’ to high heaven since you come into the room?”

“Oh, just some duckanoos,” I said. “Mama baked a batch this morning.” I took a cake from my pocket. He stared. “I’d share with you,” I said good-naturedly, “but you have to watch the sugar.” I unwrapped the banana leaf, took a bite and chewed.

“They still warm.”

“They smell good, too.” He watched me intently, his mouth half-open. “You can’t mind this sugar too much,” he said. “Some day it up, some day it down. I’m not going to park my life like bus just to please it. No, sah. You can’t live your life for sickness. I had a plumbing partner named Afoo Dayday; we went to trade school together and used to go on contracts together. Sickness chop him down a few months back. He never agree with the doctor’s warning if he didn’t take his meds. Last week the fool fully agree and he drop dead. Ask me how him die?”

I humoured him. “How he die?”

“Son of a bitch catch a pleurisy and dead.”

We heard Sister Mac sweeping the yard.

I offered him a cake. He undid the bundle with his teeth, spitting bits of husk into his palm. “Wooh,” he cooed, savouring each mouthful and working his bony jaws, “I never miss your granny’s bake sale at church.” He winked at me. “And you know I always had a weakness for sweetness.” That was Renee, his secretary at work. We ate in silence. He asked for another cake, a self-pitying look on his face. “This was always my problem. No self-control.” Now heady with the pleasure of the unexpected treat, he became chatty and jovial. “You know, I was certain you’d become a famous writer. I remember you spent all that summer with your nose in a book. I couldn’t find you to do anything round the shop. What happen, you still do the writing?” When he opened his mouth blue bits of cake filled the caves of his teeth. The sight made me sick. I thought of yard fowls with black worms wriggling in their beaks.

“I still write from time to time,” I said.

He half-closed his eyes and said in a confidential tone, “You know, my favourite story is one my technical drawing instructor told us at trade school. You want to hear it?”

I nodded.

The story was about a village lunatic who stole upon a woman washing clothes by a river, overpowered her, raped her, and fled the scene. He told it with jovial abandon. It was a joke after all, the punchline being the newspaper headline: Nut Screws Washer And Bolts.

I’d heard it before but laughed anyway. I wondered if he thought he’d got away with his crime, cornered and weak as he was, but obviously content. I said, “I have one too. In fact I wrote it only recently. You want to hear it?”

“Please, be my guest. I have nowhere going.”

I leaned forward and took a deep breath. “This story takes place during Market Week, just before Christmas. A vendor goes to Cayman for a few days to buy stock for her store, and leaves her teenage daughter home alone. A man breaks into the house while the girl is asleep and rapes her brutally, over and over again…”

When I was finished, he cocked his head like a bemused mutt. “That’s a helluva story. Not jokey like mine. Makes you think ’bout all the suffering in this world.”

“Yes,” I said. “I suppose it does.”

He cleaned his teeth noisily with his tongue. He’d eaten five cakes while I spoke. “These things really happening.”

“Yes. I suppose they are.”

“As much as you think you have it bad, someone always have it worse. But anyone who causes another suffering will have to answer for it.”

I looked at him. “You think so?”

“But of course. God not sleeping. No sin going unpunished.”

“God has nothing to do with this.” I said this sharply and he looked bewildered by my outburst. I couldn’t bear to hear him speak anymore. I got up to leave. “I’ll bring the gin tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Pass me that wallet on the table. And bring more duckanoos if you can.”

“Yes. Perhaps I’ll share another story.”

Serving 2

The next day I brought the gin as promised, and eight more cakes. I sat by the bed as before. There was no reservation this time, no halting guilt; he attacked the cakes with gusto, fully content in our conspiracy, encouraged by the sound of his wife sweeping outside. He said, “Tess remind me last night about that poor boy’s death. Such an awful thing.” And he actually looked remorseful.

“What boy?” I asked.

He blinked. “Your friend, of course. Clare’s son.”

“It’s okay. You can say his name. I’m sure you remember it.” He fumbled, his eyes going up in his head as if straining to recollect. “After all, we did work for you in the woodwork shop that spring, in this same yard.”

A thought made his mouth tight. He stopped chewing. “Oh yes,” he said feebly. “Now that you mention it. But that was so long ago. You have a story for me today?”

“I do. This one is about a carpenter who one spring is charged with the care of two puppies. This man is supposedly god-fearing, but his evil instincts get the better of him and he kills the puppies, drowns them at sea…”

He watched me curiously, weighing each word. I wanted them to pierce his heart. When I finished, his mouth was clamped shut, his eyes, white and bloodless, were drawn up in his head. I thought he was avoiding my stare, but it was something else entirely. He suddenly appeared in distress, taking shallow, rasping breaths and rolling his eyes. He clawed at his throat. “I think the sugar spiking,” he rasped. “Too much sweetness in the blood. Can you get me a glass o’ prune juice from the fridge.” He had consumed at least eight cakes.

I came back with the juice. He drank with noisy, hurried gulps, the glass trembling in his hands, then he fell back limply, his chest rattling with each laboured breath. I wiped the juice dribbling down his chin with my handkerchief. His neck looked thin enough to snap like a twig. Snap it! Snap it!/ Smother the sonuvabitch with the pillow!/No not yet —

“Thank you,” Brother Mac said, watching me suspiciously. I looked down at him, then pushed my face close to his. His dark hairy nostrils smelled like a rat’s nest. I nearly gagged. Understanding passed between us. He held his breath. Not yet, I said with my eyes, not yet, you haven’t suffered enough.

I leaned back and said, “You know, when I was a boy no bigger than that table over there, sometimes when Mama sent me to the shop I would pinch the change to buy peanut butter cookies. And whenever she suspected the count was wrong, she’d ask me if I’d spent the money and I’d lie. Then she’d tell me to say ‘ah’ and she’d check my tongue and smell my breath. Yet no matter how much she beat me for lyin’, I kept on doin’ it. Why yuh think that is?”

He mashed his mouth inwards, his features collapsing. “The temptation was too great. You just had to have the cookies, regardless of the consequence.”

“Consequence… that’s a good word… What would you have done in my stead… to avoid the consequence?”

“Me?” He waved me off jovially. “Go on now, heheheh… don’t get me started, I would’ve –” He’d begun brightly then checked himself. “Ah never min’ all dat… Past words an’ deeds is ol’ bone. Let time bury dem an’ let no dawg dig dem up. But rest assured, I got away wid more than my fair share of mischief in my day.”

He began looking for something in the bedside table drawers, fumbling for the insulin pen. “Here. Can you give me my injection, son. You know, it’s partially your fault de sugar spiking eh, nuh. It’s the least you can do.” I clenched my jaws, but before he could see my reluctance I uncapped the pen and injected him. “Thank you,” he smiled, and inspected the cartridge. “There’s only a little left… and I won’t be able to replace it till next month. These things ain’t cheap, you know.”

I got up and my knee knocked the insulin pen off the table. “And what about that which can never be replaced?” He furrowed his brows at me as I left, and when he called me to retrieve the pen I ignored him. From the doorway, I watched him crawl out of bed headfirst on his belly.

Serving 3

The next day he wasn’t expecting me and was dismayed by the visit, especially when Sister Mac used the opportunity to visit a friend down the street. He looked almost fearful to see her go. But I bribed him with some mangoes I’d picked that morning. At first he stalled, but couldn’t hold out. Soon he was stripping away the skin and tearing the flesh between his teeth. When he was done, he became talkative again. “Yesterday, you talkin’ ’bout when you was a bwoy? But lemme tell you, when I was a bwoy, I could never have a whole mango to myself. I always had to share it with my brother. He ate the belly and I sucked the seed.” I closed my eyes. I remembered Tristan’s choked pleas in the shed. “I sucked it dry dry,” he reminisced, “till it white like salt.”

“That’s the way to eat mangoes,” I agreed, pulling the chair closer and leaning forward, speaking in his ear. “You must grip it in your bare hands, like a small boy’s head, and ravage it. You must satisfy your craving till there’s nothing left but skin and seed, skin and bone, then you can always have another one, eh.”

He stopped eating. There was fear in his eyes.

“I have another story to tell you,” I said.

He made as if to rise from the bed, looking around for his crutches. “I need some fresh air,” he said. “Excuse me, I think I’ve heard enough of your stories.”

I gently pushed him back on the bed. “No, I don’t think you have.”

He didn’t resist.

“Here,” I said, patting his shoulder. “Have another mango.” He shrank from my touch.

I cracked my knuckles and leaned back in the chair. “The Indian mongoose, newly introduced to the island to exterminate rats and other vermin destroying the sugar cane crop each year, was walking through a cane piece one day and came across a Jamaican yellow boa…”

At the end, I asked him the same question Papa had once asked me: “Who are you in this story: the mongoose, the snake, or the snake’s children? The murderer, the coward, or the hapless victim?”

“I don’t know,” he said through clenched teeth. “But I get the feeling you’re about to tell me.” He said this with a tone of defiance. I’d lost the advantage, but I couldn’t back down now. I sucked in air hard, balled it deep in my stomach, then let out: “You are the murderous mongoose! You murdered Tristan that afternoon and I watched you do it!”

I was expecting shock, false penitence, rage, anything. But he was calm. “That was a long time ago,” he said meekly. “I was a different man. A sinner, as I am now. But I’ve repented, son.”

“Don’t call me that! I’m not your son!”

His face went slack and solemn, his hands folded in his lap. In their skeletal state they looked like cruel claws. “It wasn’t my intention to open your eyes to that kind of evil in the world. But I’m not sorry that I did. The wrath of God has been unsparing ever since, beating me with many stripes for staining the soul of the innocent.” He spoke with the lyrical triteness of a Sunday sermon.

“That’s all you have to say after all these years?”

“You’re angry. You have every right to be. I deserve your condemnation. I regret what I did to that boy. He’s gone – God rest his soul – but I can still beg your forgiveness.” I looked at him steadily and trapped under my gaze he lost his composure and beat his fist into the bed. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, okay! What more you want from me, eh? What you want me to do – cut out me heart and put it on a table for you? Would that make you satisfied?” I went to the kitchen and came back with a knife and put it on the bed’s edge and leant forward, my eyes on his face, tapping my foot to the ticking clock above us. Tick tick tick tick tick. His loose lips quivered. “Oh God dear Jesus no…” Tick tick tick tick tick. He started wringing his hands, his mouth open and collapsed.

I whispered, with my finger to my lips, “Shh! You hear that?”

“What? What is it?”

“Shh! Keep your voice down!” I removed my finger and gave him the goblin grin. “Tick tick tick… That’s the sound of your heart, beating with that horrible muffled sound… like a clock wrapped up in a bundle of rags. Don’t you hear it?”

He felt his bony chest. “Yes! Yes I hear it!”

“Isn’t it an awful and disquieting thing, as if it’s coming from a tomb?”

“It’s absolutely wretched!”

“Don’t you want it to stop?”

“Yes! Yes I do!” He grabbed the knife and held it in his trembling grip, then his fingers went rigid and it fell to the floor. He pounded his forehead with his fist. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “Please! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

I closed my eyes against a surprising warm sting of tears. “You know, I spent a long time contemplating that story, not knowing who I was, thinking I must be the coward, that I had left the Tyger to devour the Lamb that afternoon. But I am not the coward or the victim, and certainly not the murderer. I am the storyteller. I am the eyes that see and the mouth that tells. And I will keep telling this story until the world listens.”

“That’s your right,” he said quietly. “And I’m satisfied the experience has brought you greater self-awareness.”

I rose from the chair. “You have my forgiveness. Be at peace.” The words puzzled me even as I said them. But I found myself letting go of my bitterness. I just couldn’t carry it anymore.

He turned away from me, burying his face into his hands as if to sob. “Thank you,” he murmured, “…thank you.”

“I’ve said all I’ve come to say.”

He stretched his hand out and I pulled back. “Go with God.”

“I’m afraid I go alone.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said, his voice regaining its assurance. “When you find him, you’ll truly find yourself.”

A final remark rose to my lips, but I held my tongue. After I’d left the room I turned back and crept up to the door to watch him. He was hunched over, hoarding the remaining mangoes behind the headboard.

A few days before my departure, I cried when I heard he had lapsed into a diabetic coma. His suffering had brought no closure, no consolation. I was leaving so much behind: place, youth, but not memory. That cup would never pass.

PART II

THE CITY STIRS – PAPA’S REQUIEM

CHAPTER 1 – MONTEGO BAY PASTORAL

In Jamaica there are three things you don’t do on a Sunday: you don’t cook rice and peas without coconut milk, you don’t beat your children, and you don’t – not as a self-respecting, God-fearing woman – go to church without wearing a hat, or at least a decent wig. The first and third rules taken care of, my grandmother was an expert at flouting the second. Took to breaking it with more resourcefulness than congregants breaking bread at Holy Communion. With her right hand she would slap and pinch and pull till your skin was sore and puffy, and with the left hand upraised, as if swearing an oath, she warned you to keep quiet, else your punishment would double. But this was a ruse. Whether you protested or not she kept on hitting you until she felt satisfied.

This morning’s punishment was special. I had defied her, had opened my mouth to speak in a strange tongue, had said no when I should have said yes. I felt that righteousness was on my side; it was how I imagined Deacon Sharpe must have felt on that great Christmas morning of the 1831 slave rebellion. But my courage hadn’t lasted long, and my palms felt slippery as I imagined the hangman’s noose around the Deacon’s neck as he stood on the gallows in his Sunday best. Unlike him, I wouldn’t have the solace of even a great parting sound bite to seal my place in history.

“Phyllis, why you don’t let the bwoy do it half and half. Go to summer school for a month, then go to work with Mackie for a month.” This was Papa, sitting across from me at the kitchen table.

“Clarence, don’t draw me tongue!” Mama snapped. “This don’t concern you.”

Papa shrugged and sipped his tea. He didn’t have the strength to argue. He was going through another of his spells when he’d wake up in the morning with his insides scrubbed raw, and hard food was off limits. Such moments came after his dream when the gift of prophecy was sealed inside him, barred from ever coming out, his belly a mouth sewn shut with cords of fire.

“An’ is not even summer school,” I mumbled, spooning my porridge listlessly, my elbow propped defiantly on the table and my palm pressed against my ear, “is a writing workshop… an’ it’s free.”

Mama glared at me. “A writing wha’?” She rolled her eyes in her mocking way. “What a piece o’ fanciness. Look here, mister man. The only workshop you goin’ is Mackie woodwork shop, bright and early tomorrow morning. Get that in your head! You coulda pout some more…”

1. The Jesus Carpenter and the Jacket Man Crisis

The matter of contention was that I’d already signed up for a three-week writing workshop at the parish library. The library people had come to school in April promoting the event, handing out flimsy, puke-green pencil cases and Reading Maketh a Full Man lapel pins.

Now here I was, two months later, gainfully employed and woefully depressed, conditioning my mind to face the rigours of hard labour. My grandmother had got me a job with none other than Herbert Macintyre, aka Brother Mac, aka the Jesus Carpenter, an eloquent preacher and deacon at the Burchell Baptist Church (the church of the great Sam Sharpe) and a carpenter of not inconsiderable repute, though more famous for delivering promises than actual furniture. He had even been charged once with defrauding his renters by tampering with an electricity meter. I had also witnessed his depravity four years before, the incident that had changed my life.

To start with, Brother Mac’s Woodwork Shop, as the legend outside the shop declared, wasn’t really his. It was one of many rented units at the Bogue Industrial Estate in Montego Bay, just across the street from the sewage plant whose aluminium covers shimmered like a sea of glass in the sun. The estate was owned by Fitz-George Henry, aka the Jacket Man, a former drug lord and gangster of the 1970s political scene who’d been sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, and who, like a good many people with a wall to their backs and time on their hands, had searched for God, found him and got early release.

Henry’s history with the Baptist church was short-lived but lively. He became a member soon after leaving prison in 1990, but his forays into public life soon brought him into conflict with the church. The last straw was when he bought a license from the Gaming Commission to build several casinos. The Baptist Council of Churches came down like a scourge on his head. He was disfellowshipped, cast out from the flock, banished to roam the wilderness of the spiritually slothful. Three years later, with the acquisition of the Fletcher’s Land property, he had rubbed salt into the church’s wound. They had planned to acquire the site for their new western conference centre. Henry was intending to build a permanent home for the world’s largest reggae festival: Reggae Jammin’ Jamfest Jamboree.

The Church, not wanting to appear bitter, had extended an olive branch. At a parochial prayer breakfast, to which Henry was invited, the Archbishop had tried to broker a peace with their wayward son, wishing him success with his new venture. Henry, in return, had offered to allow the church to play a role in the development of his new property.

This was where Brother Mac came in. The Church commissioned him to build seven hundred foldout chairs for the VIP section of the venue, over a period of three months.

When I started working with him, Brother Mac was already into his second month, having started in May, the chairs due for the end of July. The festival would start in August and run for a week.

Brother Mac had worked for Henry before, so you had to think that Henry, with his knowledge of Brother Mac’s highly individual work ethic, must have trusted his reputation to keep Mac in order – particularly the stories of the licensed firearm he allegedly toted below his coat, and the legend that he’d killed his wife and buried her beneath the tiles of his pool at his Plantation Heights mansion, then reported her missing. This had earned him the nickname, Stonewall Henry. You’d hear idling estate workers singing under their breaths:

One two three four Jacketman a come

One two three four, Jacketman a come

Wid de moneybag a knock him belly bam bam bam

Wid de gunstrap a knock him belly bam bam bam…

This was when they saw the blue Mercedes pull up by the gate the last Friday of every fortnight, when Henry personally doled out brown envelopes of cash and checked on the general status of things. Then they’d take flight like zinc sheets in a hurricane across the grounds.

But despite all this notoriety, we were fixing the Jacket Man’s business, swindling him. From Day One. What we were doing was this: since completing the first three hundred chairs, we started renting them out to various church groups for weeks at a time. They needed the chairs for their summer tent crusades. We’d rent a hundred or so chairs to a particular church for one or two weeks. And since we had completed Jacket Man’s quota a month early, by working sometimes up to nine p.m., we had the full complement of chairs at our disposal. We could rent to three or more clients at a time, depending on demand.

When the chairs came back, all we had to do was a little refurbishing, scraping off globs of candle-fat or gum, then applying a light coat of varnish, depending on the state of disrepair, before sending them out again. For the rest of the day, with no more chairs to be made, we had time to ourselves.

I passed most of the time reading. I’d gone back to the library, following the row with Mama, to borrow a few books on the workshop’s reading list. My confidence had sunk when I saw it was the portly, overly dramatic librarian on duty. I’d never had a good relationship with this man, even as a child borrowing books from the Young Readers section. I had selected Naipaul’s A Flag on the Island and Fitzgerald’s