Drink the Dew
The first time I see she, I was leading a gang of workers to pave the street in front of she grandmother house in Scarborough.
She did live there with she mother, Miss Betty. The house was brick on six short, concrete piles and had fancy wooden decorations, like them houses in colonial times, and a gallery at the side. It was inland but the salty sea blas’ from the Bay had eat away the galvanize roof and leave blackish teeth marks on the roof’s curly edge. Most of the time, the two women keep the wooden jalousies close so the workers couldn’t see inside the house. But sometimes, she, the daughter, would open one jalousie a lil’ bit and look out for hours. From the road, she look like a cotton shape with wooden stripes and no face. Then just so, the jalousie would be shut for days and, from church bell to whistle blow, me and the workmen had to search the wooden eyelids of the house for a glimpse a she.
Then, one morning she appear in the gallery with a jug and call we for water. She was shapely, tall and strong, with a mannishness to she. A plain face that I didn’t know how to read yet. She pour my water without looking at me, turn and went inside. That was how Queenie was. All she actions flow into one another, like river into sea. She was the mouth of the river. You could never know how deep she was. This was the real reason I did love she, though I never use that word.
After the road finish, I visit she a few times. Miss Betty was there plenty times, sitting at one corner of the gallery, crocheting some endless doily and sucking she teeth. Queenie sit down across from me, a glass of lime juice on the table between we, nodding she head, not saying nothing. Me, talking more than I ever talk. ’Bout people in Hope Village, where I born and grow. Who get married. Who buying land. Then I start to talk ’bout myself, boasting about my land in the village interior, ’bout my salary and all the people who work under me, feeling like I had to impress Queenie and she mother. This went on for three weeks or so until one morning I was going there on my bicycle with a peccary I did ketch that dawn and, jus’ so, I turn around and ride to John Dial, the village just before Hope, to a one-room house on four concrete piles. There was a separate kitchen, flat on the ground at the left of the house.
In John Dial, Katie was in the backyard hanging out clothes. I could see she legs, thick and solid. From where I was, it look as if she legs was holding up the house. I call out to she from the street, but she didn’t answer. She stand up still, listening, not knowing I could see she. Overhead, a kiskadee scream as it fly out from the dry gully at the back of Katie house. She come out to meet me and clap she hands.
Hector, yuh bring a peccary fi mi, or yuh on yuh way to someplace else? A wire bend across she forehead, but a bell was ringing in she voice.
I dey here. I smile.
She clap again and take the animal from me, the wire gone from between she eyes.
I didn’t say nothing more to Katie. She leave the clothes and make a fire near the kitchen. As I was bathing in the open air on the concrete slab near the gully, I smell the smokey, sweaty stinkness of she singeing the hair from the peccary. I put on the same clothes and hang out the rest of she washing. When she did done cook, we eat, me sitting on a crate and she standing at the kitchen door. Afterwards, just so, without even washing she hands and mouth, she lift she skirt to show she front to me. I didn’t really want any, but I was generous with the peccary, so she feel she had to be generous with she self. I take a little with my head turn to one side so she couldn’t kiss me.
*
After that, I stay off Cane Street and any of the streets near where Queenie live with she mother. It was easy too, ’cause the government was cutting more roads in town, and I get another foreman post. It was 1946, you see. The War was over by then, and the big boys from England and Trinidad did want to develop Tobago after they did neglect we for so long. Some people say it was the distance and the cost of the steamer to travel between the two islands. But I think it was that Port-of-Spain was far away, and Tobago was just a village to them big boys making decisions from nice offices in the capital with fans and ice water.
Was so then. Same now.
I think, altogether, I didn’t see Queenie for nearly two months. So, when Ottley’s youngest boy come all the way from town to bring the message that she want to see me, I was in two minds about going. I give the boy ten cents for the message and get on my bicycle.
Nobody was in the yard, so I lean my cycle against the side of the house. I look up at the jalousie and was starting to feel that feeling again. You know? Like a boy playing among he betters. But I straighten up my back and walk up them three concrete steps. Nobody in the gallery, and the drawing-room door was open, so I walk in. In the drawing room, I could just make out the shapes of cabinets and chairs in the false dawn inside. Uneasy, I hold on to the hem of my shirt at the back then I hear something behind me. When I turn, Queenie was there in a thin cotton duster. The light from the open front door make the duster into whitish glass, and I could see she full, bare breasts underneath. I slap she hard on she waist with one hand like I was sizing up a tree before I cut it down. She turn, close the door, and we do we quick, scorching thing right there.
*
When we get together, I move out from Tan’s house to live with Queenie and she mother. After each of the first three boys, Sidney, James and Phillip, was born, Betty take care of Queenie. Band-up Queenie belly and gave she bush to drink, so the body would come back to itself after the babies.
Just around after Phillip was born, Betty marry a Horace James, a man from right down the road from Queenie house. With money from the goods Horace sell from he garden, together with what Betty save from she job in Scarborough General, washing dirty bedding and clothes, they build a house together on Horace family land. Fast, fast they had a son. Then a boy and girl twin. Betty did ease off of visiting we for lil’ bit, as she settle sheself and she new marriage. After we daughter, Freda, was born, Betty start to visit more often, staying longer each time. Sometimes she bring she three chirren and spend weeks away from she own house and husband. I think things wasn’t going good between she and Horace, ’cause sometimes I see him in town and, since the twin, he get small.
With all the chirren, mine, plus Betty’s three sometimes, I hire a woman, Carol, to help with the cooking and washing. Most evenings, I come home to quarrels that finish just as I was parking my cycle behind the house. By the time I reach inside, Betty leave the room quick, mumbling to she self as she went. Queenie, like always, didn’t let Betty tune strum she.
*
We was together five years and Betty was still bad-mouthing.
She say I had other women.
How I didn’t have enough money.
How I was too ugly for she daughter.
Sometimes, I did feel to spin Betty around and put some bad words in she face. Let she know how I was the best man for she daughter. But Betty was a starch-cotton-and-hat kind of woman, and it was easy to imagine these things when she was not in the same room. In she face, I couldn’t find my voice. This was about the time Queenie ask me to build a house for we alone.
We will rent out this house I inherit from my grandmother, so it stay in the family. That way people go stay in their own house.
It was the first time she almost say something about Betty being with we all the time.
I had land all over Hope and choose a nice plot almost to the centre of the village. Betty would have had to leave the pave street and follow a dirt path along Hope River to get to it. Ha!
Queenie was pregnant with Henry, we last chile, when I start as foreman on a government project to cut and pave new roads in Roxborough. I and men from the village was putting in work at the new house most evenings during the week and on weekends. When I did go to Queenie, it was to sleep or to wash and cook when Carol was off. Queenie got fat, round and nice. Things was good between we. We had we own way of talking without words when Betty was there. Sometimes, we talk with we eyes and leave Betty with the chirren so we could make fierce love in the small kitchen next to the house. All my sons was toy versions of me, tall, broad-shoulders with laugh lines that went from both sides of their noses to the corner of their mouths. Freda, with she Demerara sugar hair color and fair skin, look jus’ like Queenie, move like she, but had a vast ocean-like way about she. She wasn’t a river mouth at all. Freda was someone you could know.
*
That morning, I did wake up early, early to play with the chirren before I went to work. When I walk up from the bathroom behind the house, a stiff brackish wind was blowing off the Bay, so I hug my damp skin and wait for Queenie to open the door. She did just finish nursing Henry and hand him to me. We hear a grumble, as we pass through the drawing room where Betty and she three chirren sleep on the floor, and stifle a giggle. I get dress and talk soft to Queenie about the house in the interior. Henry, at nine months, was trying to walk, and the boys get up from their bedding under we bed to hug my neck and play. Freda sit at the edge of the bed staring. I ask she what she was looking at and she cover she face. She keep it cover up till I leave for work.
In town, the shipment of pitch to pave the road was keep back in Trinidad, so I send the men home and ride to Friendsfield Road, sit down on a metal railing by the side of the road to smoke a Du Maurier. Errol, a fella from Hope, who I see around town stop and ask me for cigarettes. Errol talk through two cigarettes worth, then get quiet. I don’t remember what I ask him or how we get to it, but he tell me if I went home now, I would see Queenie with she man. After he say it, he jump off the railing like if somebody push him and hold up he two hands, like he was surrendering.
I throw the rest of the cigarettes at him and get on my bicycle. I couldn’t feel the handlebars or the pedals. My body was moving from memory.
When I reach there, Betty was under the house with Freda and the twins. She run toward me and shout out Queenie name. I push Betty, take my cutlass from the house pillar and run up the steps. My heart was boiling in my chest. I was sweating, the air like just before a storm. My body tingling like I was hunting and about to corner a ‘gouti.
In the gallery, Queenie was by the front door and, for the first time, I could read she.
Behind she was a man. I try to get pass she, but she block the doorway. Then, I don’t know, I feel to bathe she, so I try to take she to the bathroom and, when she wouldn’t go, I hit she with the side of the cutlass, hold she two hands and drag she on she belly down the stairs and around to the bathroom at the back of the house. The man, I can’t say he name, jump over the low banister and run away. In the bathroom, I throw a bucket of water on she and ask, Wha’ you doin’?
I don’t know. Is, is Mammy. She was crying and the spit and phlegm make a bubble when she say it.
She face and chest was scrape-up––dress tear-up. Heavy footsteps pound my head and chest. Me and she was the only people in the world. I close my eyes and when I open them, Queenie, the bathroom, the yard, the house, everything went behind a door, and I was looking at them through a small hole, seeing only glimpses of things, never the whole picture. Next, it was like I did just wake up––hands, feet, head, every part of me tired and heavy. My throat hurt, and I was trying to remember something that was at the tip of my tongue. The side of my face was itching and when I scratch it, my fingers was bloody. It was all over my chest, my pants, my boots. I was in the front of the yard looking for Queenie ’cause I thought I did just come home from somewhere and wanted to tell she something. Then, my boot hit she head, done cover up with bluebottle flies. She was split down she center, she insides mix up with grass and dirt. Between she legs, a bloody pulp. I roar hard to bring down the sky so that it would flatten me ’cause I did spoil she. When the sky didn’t fall, I put the cutlass to my throat and rub it back and forth, a damp, rubbery noise in my ears. Sounds from far away get closer. Hands hold me down, grab the blade and hit me till I was out.
*
I spend most of the court case trying to remember what happen between the railing and finding Queenie so. I listen to the lawyer man with the white wig, the constable, Betty in black. All of them talking and talking. But they was talking about scenes from a magic lantern show that I never see when the man from Trinidad come to set up he complicated business in Town Market. In the end, I get manslaughter––five years on Carrera Island. People say I didn’t hang ’cause Betty was the only witness. Betty encourage wrongdoing, they say. Bible justice.
Upholding, Horace tell she, just as they was carrying me out, chain up like a animal.
They say too that I get five years ’cause my mother dress a fowl cock with obeah to sway the judge. Tan would do something like that, but I could never ask, ’cause obeah have no conversation.
The chirren scatter, some to this one, others to that one.
When they release me and I was back in Hope, my daddy give me the house he used to live in with the woman he marry after he and Tan mash up. I was there a week when Betty drop Sidney, James and Phillip in the street and leave before I could walk to the place where the Barber-Green meet the dirt in the yard. I couldn’t look at them boys without my eyes burning and thinking about the darkness after the cigarette on the bridge that make them not have a mother. Not too long after, Leonard, Queenie daddy, bring Freda and Henry on the front of he bicycle with their bedding and school books in a flour bag tied to the back. At eight years old, Freda was the mirror of she mother in face and almost in body. But that wasn’t the reason I send she to live with Tan. The house was one room then. Me and four boys? Not proper for she. Freda had a long, bumpy scar on she stomach that she scratch sometimes. When I ask she ’bout it, she say she always had it. I know she get that mark somewhere in the twilight between jumping off a bicycle in the middle of the day and trying to cut my own throat.
Once me and the chirren was back in Hope, things settle into a rhythm. Steady. Like waves back and forth on Hope Beach. Freda with Tan. Me carrying food there every week to help out. Bonito, Moonshine, ‘guana, cassava, anything I ketch or plant. Freda does come to play with she brothers after school or on a Saturday evening after she wash she school clothes and anything else Tan ask she to do. The boys spend time between me and Betty and their endless fighting. Sydney and Phillip was alright, but James. Greedy and often picking at people. At things. At ants, for walking near he foot. From he small, he had a thing in him I didn’t like. Henry stay, say ’bout three months, then went back to Leonard and Ann, he common-law wife, in Scarborough. I try to tell him, I is he daddy and these is he brothers, but I read he eyes from the first day he reach and them eyes was always asking: Who is these people?
I did stop dreaming after it happen, then just so I was having the same dream every night. I looking for someone or something or some place I can’t find. I wake from this searching dream with a deep, deep disappointment that make me vex they take away my cutlass so quick. Then I was shame that God know what I thinking. Since they release me from Carrera, my throat is dry all the time, a thirstiness I can’t get rid of. So, I drink. Rum. Drink till the dryness is gone, till I fall, grateful for sleep without the endless searching and finding nothing.
I sell the half-built house and gamble away some of the land. I beat the boys sometimes ’cause I can’t beat myself.
As to women. Well. Nobody for a long time. But I have property and draw pay, and that is enough for them with chirren to mind and who want to eat their yam with salted cod instead of salted butter sometimes. When the feeling is more than me and there is no one, I go to Katie. She only let me in she house at night, but I have to leave before the birds’ wives wake up. Eventually, I take up with one Charlene. She live in a three-room with she mother and three brothers. Men went in and out to the mother when things was tight with them. Charlene was meagre and short for a woman with open sores on she hands and feet, hardly talk and didn’t ask questions. At first, like everybody else, I climb in she bedroom window at night for one thing. Then for other things. I start washing she sores with Bluestone to dry up the weeping and to take away the smell she had. Feed she Marmite and Horlicks with boil cow’s milk. One night I notice she body was fuller, warmer. That same night after we finish, she mother came in the room, sit down on the only chair, and look down at we, lying on the floor on rice bags stuff with grass.
Belly ah tell pussy secret, Mr. Scott, she say. Yuh ah go claim mi only dah’tah?
I look from Charlene to she mother and nod yes, another direction.
I add on a room to the house and take Charlene there. We start a family, grafting a thin failing branch to a strong tree with termites eating the root that no one could see. Freda and she brothers, I keep close in the breast pocket of my shirt, as me and Queenie was together in them. Proof that there was another direction at one time.
Sometimes I see Betty in town. In the market usually. She tall loud daughter and quiet knotty sons and husband in tow. She still don’t talk to me. And she does make a point to turn she back when she see me. Sometimes, I watch she back muscles tense up under the cotton as she turn away. Sometimes, I turn away too, my hands shaking and needles sticking me all over.