The boy dealt five cards to each of the men. His movements were quick and precise, making a tidy pile for each player to sweep up and fan in their hands. Outside, the streets jangled with noise – food wagons clattering past and vendors calling, the bark of dogs, calypso lifting from the yard into the night. But the noises were distant in the humid room – only the sound of breathing was loud, and one man tapping his anxious fingers on the table’s rim. A bare bulb hung above them, illuminating the cracked wood, the ashtray and glasses, the copper flask of liquor.
The game went on all night. A boy named Felix served drinks, bringing them to the table from behind the bar. The players might change – one man pushing back his chair to leave as another stepped through the door. A man might simply fold his hand and head home with empty pockets, or he might go out into the passageway and climb the stairs to another room where a girl in an orange dress sat waiting on the bed, a bottle of rum beside her. Her name was Zephyr and she was fifteen. He might come down after, to take back his place at the table, or go silently into the alley, quieter inside himself, moving past the stray cats and dogs, his shadow cast on the yard walls.
The boy dealt here two or three nights a week. He took the old yellow bus from Yallahs to Kingston at dusk, swerving on the dim-lit roads into the city, then rode the delivery trucks home at dawn, half asleep, perched on the truck’s back step as the red sun rose over the hills.
That first time, he’d jumped off the bus at Half Way Tree, jumped onto another bus downtown and then followed the scrawled map Mr Ho Choy had drawn him, through the grid of roads that led to Barry Street, where the betting shops and card clubs nestled between the bright shop fronts of hardware stores and hairdressers and bakeries. This was Kingston, then, he thought. More people than the boy had ever seen in one place. More dirt, more noise. But these streets had an energy that rose through him. So this was the city his father could not keep away from. It was here that the old shops had been lost.
He walked the length of the street for an hour, the air warm, the sky dark above him and half-bent on a storm. He noted the Chiney shops with their red awnings and slats stacked high with yams and bananas, and the pavement vendors who unrolled their mats to sell all manner of goods – matches, saucepans, clothes, shoes. He was observing what went on here – the mood and movements of the streets, the chatter, how things went and who knew whom. Then, as darkness fell, he went back to the building he’d seen earlier, marked with an X on the crumpled map – two red-brick floors on the corner of King Street in Chinatown. It had dark windows and a blue door he pushed open to find Mr Manny sat alone on a stool at the wooden bar with a cup of coffee, just as Mr Ho Choy said he would be. The boy said his name and why he had come. ‘Yes, man,’ Mr Manny’s voice was deep and hoarse. He stood. ‘Charlie tell me to expect you.’
Charlie was Mr Ho Choy’s other name but no one in Yallahs used it. The boy took Mr Manny in. He was a tall man with a dark, shiny face, thick creases in the forehead and puckered above his nose, a short deep scar across his cheek. He wore a white shirt, grimy at the cuffs and collar. He was fifty maybe. Some grey in the close cut of his hair. ‘So, you want to show me what you can do?’ Mr Manny asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ the boy said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a deck of cards.
They stood at the round table in the centre of the room, and the boy began to shuffle – simple cuts at first, overlaying the cards in one hand. Tap, tap. Then with both hands, a dovetail, flicking two piles of cards into one. Then a riffle, the cards whispering themselves into place. He flexed their backs into a high arched bridge. Another cut. Tap tap. Every move he made was small and defined. No mistakes. Then he dealt the cards to four imaginary players around the table, and the whole time, Mr Manny stood and watched him, didn’t move his eyes from the boy’s quick hands. He dealt swiftly, a clear pile for each player, then looked up.
‘Go once more,’ the older man said, ‘with my cards,’ reaching behind the bar for another deck and handing it to the boy. ‘Six for six hands.’ The boy dealt as quickly and tidily as he had before. Then he dealt again, and again. Outside, the rain came down, thrashing the street, sweetening the air.
‘You can work tonight?’ Mr Manny finally asked. The boy nodded. Mr Manny rubbed his head. ‘That Charlie. He say you good.’
♥
Back in Yallahs, his father owned a new shop. The boy still served there, but someone new had come. Her name was Rhona and she stepped from behind his father’s back one day. James Lowe had come home from Kingston, appearing silent as a shadow in the shop’s doorway as the boy stood behind the counter. Behind him was a young girl, thirteen or so. From the boy’s position, he could just see her feet. His father walked straight through the shop into the back room without a word to the boy, but the girl came right in, her eyes moving across the chaotic shelves and landing on the boy. She was small and pretty, with wide eyes in a brown face, the same colouring as the boy, her plaited hair was just visible below her little straw hat. She didn’t look like the village girls although her clothes were just as raggedly and poor, and she was as thin as a stick, her elbow joints wider than the rest of her arms. She held a bulging satchel. Her eyes dropped down to the boy’s feet. ‘Wha’, you have no shoes?’ she said, looking up at his face. She had a sing-song voice, strong and sweet. He looked down at his bare toes, dusty and yellow from the yard.
‘I have shoes,’ he said, slowly, carefully. ‘But mostly I go barefoot indoors – no need for shoes here.’ Then, ‘You come from Kingston?’
‘If you have shoes, you should wear them!’ The girl sang back. ‘He tell me you’re my brother, half-brother. But looking at you, I can’t believe it. Can’t believe I’m related to a boy so backwater!’ She laughed and her pink tongue popped from between her lips. ‘Is you I’m talking about,’ she added, widening her eyes at him, tipping her head to one side.
The boy said nothing, taken aback by this girl he had never seen. His sister, he thought. Another child of his father, who liked to go with girls who were only children themselves. He wondered where the girl’s mother was, how old she was.
‘What’s your name, sister?’ he asked, in an attempt at friendship. But just as she was about to answer his father appeared in the doorway, beckoning to her, and the girl went towards him. Where would she sleep, the boy thought. How long was she staying? There were so many questions – where she was from and why here, why now, and how well did she know her father? How little he knew of his father’s life. This was his father’s power. The boy was a slave at worst, a servant at best, and why should any master account for himself to a servant?
♣
That was a month ago. It seemed Rhona was here to stay. The boy now slept on sacking below the shop counter, Rhona in his bed. She was around the shop as though she’d always been there, serving the customers in her sweet voice but shirking the hard work – the early-morning scrubbing, the lifting and unpacking of goods. She wanted to know everything about the shop and repeated the same questions again and again about credit, who owed the most, who was the best customer. She made a mess of the ledger book, filling in the wrong columns, doodling in the margins. When the boy saw this he thought his father would explode with anger at her. But James Lowe said nothing, just answered Rhona’s questions in his poor English, more words at a time than the boy had ever heard him use. He was surprised by how his father’s voice softened when he spoke at length, by the light rhythm of his sentences.
And Rhona was not afraid of their father. When the shop was quiet, she took a book and made herself a nest in the shaded places of the yard, below the orange trees or in the orchid grove. James Lowe, who hated idleness, who had no time for books, said nothing. Or other times, Rhona simply wandered off on her own to the river, where the boy followed her once or twice. He’d been surprised by the quiet plaintiveness with which she sat on the rocks, ducking her feet in the flowing water.
His father didn’t care where the boy went in the evenings now, only that he was there in the mornings to open the shop. Rhona served the men at night and the boy saw how she attracted their looks, how she knew her own beauty and met their stares full-on, unblinking. His father stood behind the counter with a paper cigarette between his lips, and watched her.
♦
It was a Thursday when the boy saw his mother from the window of the bus stopping downtown on Darling Street. He knew her face. Hermione. She was standing on the kerb, waiting to cross, one hand on her hat to stop the wind from lifting it. Six years had passed, but the boy hadn’t forgotten. He dreamt about her more now, not less, and thoughts of her swam through his head as he lay sleepless on the floor of the shop. He thought about why she’d never tried to find him. Even though she’d sold him, the boy believed she had loved him. He would forgive her. He wondered why he had never tried to find her too. He had travelled all over St Thomas, delivering orders and stock, but never thought to ask for her in the different villages. He knew she had left Hearts Ease, but never thought he would find her in Kingston.
Without thinking, he jumped from the bus and followed her along the street. She walked with a little basket over her arm. Not the poor girl he remembered. She wore a pretty floral dress, neat white shoes with a heel, a small hat perched on her head. He kept close behind as she crossed onto Barry Street, walking to the corner of Gold Street, where she entered the Chiney shop on the corner. The boy followed her in. The shop was like all Chinese grocers, but larger than the one they had in Yallahs, smaller than Mr Ho Choy’s. There were aisles of high shelves packed with goods, the salt-fish barrels on one side of the room. The blinds were half drawn, the only light coming from the red paper lanterns hung from the ceiling.
There were no other customers, only his mother standing at the counter talking to the shopkeeper, a man the boy knew by sight from Barry Street. He became suddenly aware of himself, his heart beating hard in his chest. He pretended to choose star apples from a basket by the door, listening to their conversation. Slowly the boy understood his mother wasn’t talking in English, but in Chinese, stood with one hand on her hip, facing the shopkeeper. Suddenly she laughed – the giggle of a young girl – and the boy could tell the tone of her talk was flirtatious. The shopkeeper chatted away with her while his hands busied themselves, wrapping fish in wax paper, measuring rice on his scales, then sugar. He took down a jar of pink sweets from the shelf behind the counter, tipped them into a paper bag, rolled the top over and added them to the pile before him. The boy saw one hand go out to squeeze Hermione’s waist. She laughed again, like the tinkle of a bell, switching her hands on her hip. Then she leant over the counter and pecked the shopkeeper on the lips before turning with the shopping bag in her arms. It was too late for the boy to move from her path. He looked up as she came towards him, but she didn’t even register him. Her face was fixed and grim, no sign of the coquettishness of seconds ago. She walked out the door and down the step.
‘You want help?’ the shopkeeper called from behind the counter to the boy, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Yes or no? You want help? You want the apples?’
The boy shook his head and placed the apple in his hand back on the pile. He stepped out of the shop into the sun, the street full of people. He looked up and down, but Hermione had gone.
♠
The boy lay on his sack-bed below the counter in the shop. It was nearly midnight. His head was full of Hermione, trying to make sense of what he’d seen the day before. A heavy feeling filled his chest. How could she not have recognised him? Would he see her again? He wanted to, badly. He should have spoken to her. He was angry with himself.
Outside on the veranda the evening customers had gone, but he could hear his father still out there in the night talking to Rhona. He heard her laugh. The boy stood up and went to the front window of the shop, peering through the slats. The oil lamp was burning, lighting the two figures standing entwined. On the table were a liquor flask and glasses, an overflowing ashtray.
Rhona stumbled suddenly but his father’s arms were round her and he pulled her up. She threw her head back laughing. ‘Oh, I’m spinning!’ she laughed, shut-eyed, her arms tightening around his neck. James Lowe pulled Rhona closer to him, bent lower, and led her in a dance, round and round, his face pressed to hers. ‘I’m spinning,’ she said again weakly, then, ‘I want to go to bed.’ James Lowe held his daughter tighter and danced her across the wooden floor, his face lost in her hair. Round and round they went, and round and round again.