8

WHEN ANNA ENTERED hospital and I understood the gravity of her illness, I pumped her for information about the years she was separated from us. I tape-recorded her answers so I could share the information with Paul.

She’d landed at Lester B. Pearson International Airport and told the immigration officer that she was here on a visit. The officer — about 25, blond hair closely cropped, bulging ears, a nub of a nose, round rosy cheeks — stared at her with “blazing blue eyes” as he questioned her. But Grama had already prepared her. She was going to stay with Daisy Bullock. Ten years earlier Grama had lent Daisy money to come to Canada. Daisy, who hadn’t been keen to repay Grama, had recounted the travails of living in Canada “‘without your landed.’ Enough to constitute a book.” Grama had kept all the letters, bundled with elastic bands. She took them out and went over them with Anna. That evening when I returned to the flat I rifled through the cartons of Grama’s papers we’d brought from St. Vincent after her death — two boxes were still in St. Vincent — and found Daisy’s letters. The first one read:

August 11, 1977

Dear Ma Kirton,

God name be praised. I take my pen in hand in Jesus name to tell you I done reach Canada, and only by the grace of God they didn’t put me back on the plane next day. It don’t sound nice to say Ma Kirton but I hope God can help me figure out a good lie to tell so I can get my landed fast. Ma Kirton you is a good woman, I will never forget your kind favour to me. Well when I reach the airport, Oh Lord what a fright take me, is a good thing I did go to the bathroom as soon as I get off the plane, the officer send me in a room and three people one man and two woman the questions that them three ask me. Where I born, what work I does do, how many children I have, if my mother dead, how much I does work for, if I want to stay in Canada, the questions them . . .

Then them went through my luggage piece by piece and search everything in my handbag. Them find I did only have a hundred and five dollars. That was when my skin get hot and sweat pop out of my forehead and flow down my arm, and other places it not polite for mention. Them ask me how I going survive three weeks on a hundred and five dollars. I think fast and I tell them Joan-Louise will house and feed me. I think is God that put that answer in my head. Them did done phone Joan-Louise and ask if I going pay she for stay by she. Is a good thing Joan-Louise did say no. Them ask she too if we is family. Joan-Louise tell them we is cousins. But I didn’t know that. Them ask me the same question and I tell them Joan-Louise and me is friends. Then them say to me, only friends, and I say yes, but is possible that we is family too but I don’t know. That is what save me, Ma Kirton, else all this time so I would o been back in St. Vincent hiding in my mother house too shame to show my face on the street . . .

Letters about not finding work, paying lawyers to help her get her “landed,” appeals, and finally paying a man to marry her so she would get her “landed.” “She couldn’t pay back the money right away — until Mama found out she was sending barrels to her sister regularly. So Mama wrote telling her: ‘Daisy, your sister appreciates all the things you send, and begs God to shower you with blessings.’ Daisy got the hint and sent back Mama’s money in dribs and drabs.

“Mama told me to say I was a housewife and my husband was a church minister. She made me go to the manse and get the letters from the US missionaries that addressed Caleb as pastor of the Georgetown Church of the Elect. She removed all the letters that mentioned that he was in training. Caleb hadn’t touched a single thing in the manse. Then Mama showed me the bankbook for wages she’d secretly been paying me for the years I worked in the store alongside her. I never expected her to pay me. I was surprised. ‘Take out as much money as you need.’ She made me bring $6,000 in travellers’ cheques to Canada. I told the immigration officer I would be in Canada for six weeks to visit the country and to shop.

“It was a different story six weeks later when I asked for refugee status, and said I was fleeing an abusive marriage and a school system in which my son was routinely flogged. The lawyer who filed my claim urged me to say that Caleb had made an attempt on my life and had vowed to kill me if I ever returned to St. Vincent, but I couldn’t say that. From St. Vincent your grandmother advised me to start divorcing Caleb. I filed for a divorce.

“While my refugee claim was going through, I worked for Bertram Alexander, aka Bulljow: a Vincentian. He had a contract to clean two ten-storey office buildings at night. His wife, Mariette, a pretty, dark-skinned woman — full eyes, big smile, even white teeth — had heard of my situation through the St. Vincent and Grenadines Association of Montreal, and she got Bulljow to hire me. She died while I was in St. Vincent to bring you all here. I didn’t even get to go to her funeral. Bulljow paid me minimum wage for eight hours, even when I worked ten — which was at least once a week — every Friday — and every time Manjak, the other helper, didn’t show up.

“Things soured quickly between Daisy and me. Mariette and I searched through rooming house ads. We chose a room in a rooming house on Hutchinson Street: a room with sprinklers, one near to a fire escape. And I could walk to work. There was a shared kitchen and a shared bathroom on each floor.

“A late afternoon, five days after I moved in, I was in the kitchen preparing supper, and this skeleton of a man, with turkey skin, red eyes, and smelling like cat pee mixed with gin, wobbled into the kitchen. He tapped me on the shoulder, winked at me, stretched out his arms to embrace me, and began backing me into a corner. He drawled in my ear: ‘How much you gonna charge me for a good time?’ I screamed. A woman in a blue bathrobe came running into the kitchen. ‘Bo, you scumbag, get lost!” she shouted at him, then spoke to me: ‘Honey, don’t take it personally. He propositions every woman here.’ She turned back to Bo. ‘Go to the Main, you. Pervert! Can’t you see? She’s a decent woman. You need a cheap whore. Pig! Go take a shower and change your clothes. Keep away from her or I’ll chop off your balls.’

“Bo slinked out of the kitchen.

“‘Luciana,’ the woman introduced herself. She was half-Irish, half-Italian, and separated from her husband. She lived on a temporary allowance the court had awarded her while she waited for a lawsuit against her ex-husband to work its way through the courts. She’d got married at 20. Her husband had prevented her from working. They’d had no children. Her husband had insisted he didn’t want her to have any. When she turned 48 — she was 50 when we met, he became abusive and asked for a divorce. Luciana: a wonderful woman, Jay.” Anna took a deep breath. “Jay, I could talk to her. You don’t know how important it was to have somebody to talk to. Sometimes we took walks up to the mountain during the day. She drummed into my head that I should qualify for a stable job. She’d made a mistake, she said. ‘Never depend on another human being, Anna. Never. Humans are fickle.’ A few months later, when the case with her husband was settled, she bought a condo in Pointe-aux-Trembles and began working as a waitress. And our friendship fizzled.

“With Bulljow I worked at a break-neck pace, but other than that, things went well on the job for the first three months. Manjak — he was Barbadian, in his early twenties — came to work late or not at all. He was tall, smooth black, with bright, warm, large brown eyes, and cheeks that dimpled when he smiled. He wore dime-sized rhinestone earrings. Never hurried. Whenever Bulljow pushed him to speed up, he’d suck his teeth and say: ‘You fire me and me auntie ain’t gon be gi’ing you none o’ her sweetness.’ He said the chemicals we used were roughing up his fingers and scorching his lungs and seeping through his gloves and poisoning him. He’d heard too that they can cut his nature. ‘Is half a day I does soak in a tub to get the smell off muh skin. Is four girls runnin’ after me, you know, Miz Anna. Four. Once a’ while I samples ‘em, but I goes steady with one. She gon be muh wife. I loves her, Miz Anna. I do. As much as I loves muhself. And I gon be faithful to her after I marry.’ His face one huge grin. ‘My Ma says she ain’t know wha’ the girls see in me.’ He’d chuckle then. An overgrown, insecure kid, probably still needing to be mothered.

“Bulljow was an elder in the Pentecostal Church, but wanted it kept a secret. Manjak whispered this in my ear and winked at me. The auntie belonged to the church too. We both had a good laugh over it. Bulljow was about five-seven — an inch taller than me — his skin looked like oatmeal. He had coarse, fox-coloured hair, and pinkish eyes. They stared out at you like rats peeping out from their holes. His wide nostrils flared when he was excited and looked like a terrace above what Manjak called his trombone lips. Chest narrow like a pillow case. But you should see his gut: bulging on three sides and heading for his knees — good thing it did — a backside a foot out from the rest of his body. And oh those broomstick legs. I would hear myself thinking as I watched him waddling around: Lord, take this case. I wonder what Manjak’s auntie and Mariette find in him? Guess, ‘Every piece of fabric in the store got its buyer; every hoe can find a stick in the bush.’

“From the very start Bulljow dropped statements about how it pained him to see so many lost lonely Black women in Montreal, with nary a man to lean on; every which way he looked he saw Black women turning into dead wood, all their sap dried out from lack of love. He’d look at me, expecting a reply. One night when Manjak was absent, he said to me: ‘You is a puzzle, you know that? One look at your hands and I know you ain’t accustom to no hard work. From your speech I know you is a upper-class woman with good breeding. What you doing here?’ He sounded sincere.

“‘What about me that you want to know, Bulljow?’

“‘Everything. But first, why you in this country?’

“‘Because I left my husband and want to make a fresh start.’

“He stared at me, waiting for more. ‘Why you left him? He had other women? He used to beat you?’

“Jay, he sounded like those men who expect women to jump when they say so. I said nothing.

“‘Well, if any o’ those is the reasons, I don’t think that they is justification to leave a man. Women is the weaker vessel, and they needs a man to keep them straight and steady. Otherwise they is like a ship without a pilot drifting every-which-way on the ocean o’ life. The way I sees it, a man got two duties: to screw his wife and to provide for his family. If he fall down in either department, she got a right to leave him. Now, I know there is men that fulls up women with children and don’t look back. I say them kind not fit to walk the earth. How you can turn your back on your own flesh and blood? How you can do that? But a man got to keep his women satisfied and on track. A man don’t got to be faithful. Solomon had six hundred wives and six hundred concubines. The Bible say that.’

“Jay, his pink eyes glowed. His figures were wrong, but I wasn’t going to correct Deacon Bulljow.”

“‘That was one hot man, if you ask me, Anna. That Solomon was hot. And the bible say he was the wisest man that ever lived. Still and all, I think he been begging for trouble. 1,200 women to screw! 1,200! I sure he could o’ use a little help, and got it unbeknownst to him. I wish I could o’ been a fly on the wall to see and hear what went on in that harem. For me, ten’s enough. A different one for every day o’ the week and a few stand-ins for when you-all indisposed.’ He stopped talking and stared hard at me, his eyes flaming. ‘I hope you ain’t leave your husband ‘cause he hit you.’ He stared at me even harder, his forehead screwed up. ‘Every once in a while, a man — I mean a he-man — got to tap his wife to keep her on track and let her know he is the boss. I say it before, and I say it again: you all women is the weaker vessel and inclined to stray, and it take a slap or two once in a while to get you all back on course. The bible crystal clear ‘bout that: men have to rule women. But the bible leave it up to us how to manage you all. Anyway, they “that knoweth the will and doeth it not shall be beaten with many stripes.” Besides, the best cure for a nagging wife is a good slap. She will always overlook it if the follow-up is sweet, hot sex. Ask any man, the best sex is right after he beat his wife.’

“I stared into his pink eyes and at the bumps on his forehead and his lumpy skin. ‘So you beat your wife!’

“He smiled and his nostrils flared. ‘I ain’t answering that ‘cause in this country that is a dangerous question that can get me in trouble. Here the law let you all wear the pants and put us men in petticoats.’

“I laughed. Yours will have to be made to order.

“‘You ain’t tell me why you leave your husband.’

“‘None of your business, Bulljow.’

“‘You have children?’

“I gestured two.

“‘Who caring for them?’

“‘My mother.’

“‘What sex they is?’

“‘Boys.’

“‘You is irresponsible, Anna. And cold-hearted. You go traipsing off after adventure and abandon your children!’

“‘Hold it, Bulljow. What you know about me? My mother is taking excellent care of my boys. She’s a better parent than me. And it’s not like their father turned his back on his children.’

“‘But you turned your back on them. I’m warning you: if your sons turn out criminals or bullers, you will be the one to blame.’

“I laughed to hide the blow. The gays I knew about had grown up in homes with mothers and fathers — church-going ones at that.

“‘That woman psychiatrist: what’s her name? Wesling something or the other. We were discussing her . . . Never mind. She say that neglected children is the ones that turn to crime and bulling. She is a educated woman, Anna. And if she say so I have to believe her.’

“Jay, for the rest of that night I had trouble doing my work. That talk was during our four o’clock break. I couldn’t find the energy to keep up after that. I was still cleaning when the office staff began entering. When I got into my room that morning, I threw myself onto the bed, pushed my face into the mattress, and bawled.”

She stopped talking for a long time; resting her lungs, I at first thought, but she began to cry.

“What’s the matter, Ma?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

She said nothing more about her early days in Montreal that day, nor the next.

Three days later I prompted her and she resumed.

On one of Manjak’s no-show nights, they were on the sixth floor of the second building. They’d already cleaned the top four. She was wearing an old skirt, not the loose jeans she worked in, but she hadn’t been able to make it to the Laundromat that week. She was bent over a desk dusting it when she suddenly felt Bulljow’s body on hers. He’d sneaked up behind her, lifted her skirt and was clasping her breasts so hard, he was cutting off her breath. He pushed her body against the desk with his huge gut, and was twisting up himself to get his penis, stiff and pulsing, up against her buttocks, his breath, acid stink, hot on her neck.

“‘Relax, sweetypie. Anna, honey, relax,’ he said in my left ear and nibbled on it. ‘I gon go gentle with you. I been saving up a whole heap o’ sweet hot loving just for you. I’s hungry for you, honey. Hungry! Relax, baby, relax. I’s a sugar ant, Anna. And you is sweet. I can’t help it. Give it to me, Anna. I don’t want to steal it, Anna.’ Foolishness like that, Jay.

“First I froze. Then, when he lowered one arm and fumbled with his fly, I managed to turn around and began to pull away from him. When he wouldn’t let go of my skirt, I spat in his face. He let me go then. I ran behind a desk near to a window, picked up a paperweight and hurled it at him. Next a stapler. Then I pulled out a desk drawer and dumped the contents onto the desk; but, as I was about to rush him with it, I realized I could use it to break the glass and holler rape into the street below.

“Bulljow was crouched behind the desk where he’d attempted to rape me. ‘All right! All Right! Calm down!’ he shouted. ‘You don’ gotta kill me. I only trying to put a lil’ sweetness in your bitter life. See? That’s the thanks I get. I gives you a job; and now I offers you love, and you refuses it. You ain’t even know the ABC of kindness. From now on, I gon keep me tail betwixt me legs, even if I ha’ to strap it down. Don’ worry; I ain’t going bother you no more. You probably have a man in secret anyways. Some fellars do crazy things just for a piece o’ pussy, even when it ain’t sweet. Yours probably got warts growing in it, anyway.’

“I left the office and headed for the elevator.

“‘Aay! Aay! What going on? You can’t leave!’ He followed me to the elevator. ‘I alone can’t clean this place before daylight.’

“Jay, I was afraid to go into the elevator, in case he came in too. The stairs were a no-no. ‘I finish,’ he said. ‘So help me God, I won’t touch you no more. I been only testing you to see if you going say yes. I swear. I won’ bother you no more. As God is my witness.’

“I re-entered the office. I was trembling. I left for home an hour later. I began to sob as soon as I exited the building. The half-kilometre walk felt like 20. In my room I threw myself onto my bed and continued crying. I have never felt so vulnerable. I was too ashamed to tell Luciana.

“Bulljow phoned me around eleven. He apologized and begged me to come back. He didn’t know what got into him. I didn’t go the next night. But I returned. I needed the money.

“The night I returned, I told him: ‘You touch me again and I’ll cripple or kill you.’

“‘I hear you.’

“He never bothered me after that, but a few weeks later, while we were taking a break — Manjak had cursed him out two nights earlier and left the job — he said to me: ‘You’s a damn lucky woman, Anna. Damn lucky. You come to Canada at the right time. There been a time when if you didn’t have your papers you couldn’t work. Least not legally.’ He grinned, nostrils flaring, chops curling. ‘If now been like then, you wouldn’t o’ been breaking style on me. You would o’ been glad to lemme fuck you so you could keep the job. You just got to understand one thing, Anna. I is a man. I is a hot-blooded man.’

“‘And I can be a killer: a cold-blooded killer.’ I was sitting about a metre away from him, more afraid of his breath than his lechery.

“He shook his head slowly, with fake pity. ‘Here you go, talking ‘bout killing, when all I want to give you is pure first-class loving. Age don’t slow me down at all. Age don’t slow me down one bit. Anna, I wants you to understand this: I can’t be alone with a woman without wanting to fuck her.’

“‘You love your life?’

“He shook his head and pushed out his lips. ‘Anna, sweety-pie, why you breaking so much style on me? Try me. Your body will trill and your soul will sing. Sweety-pie, I got the ship, and you got the port. I got the cannon and you got the fort.’

“‘And I got the knife, and you got the throat.’

I laughed. Anna did too and paused to catch her breath.

“Jay, his jaw fell, his eyes widened. I had finally punctured that tyre. I knew I was safe after that.

“At the refugee board hearing, my lawyer, Maître Gupta — a beauti­ful South Asian woman: silk-smooth black skin, erect posture, fierce brown eyes, shoulders that said: you can’t intimidate me — fierce, a tig­ress; she couldn’t have been more than thirty. At the hearing she read excerpts of the Vincentian laws authorizing beatings by parents, teachers, and magistrates — Mama had got her solicitor to compile the information and send it to her. Maître Gupta asked the refugee judges, two women: ‘Would you want to raise your children in such an en­vironment?’ But even she was surprised when the verdict came: ‘Claim granted!’ ‘Honestly, I didn’t think you’d get it. It’s an argument that’s never been successful before,’ she later told me. It took two years and three months from the day I applied, and if I include the cost of the divorce, it came up to a lot more than I had. Mama made up the difference.

“I continued working for Bulljow until I got residency status. After that I worked for a cleaning agency three days a week, cleaning homes in Westmount mostly. I followed Luciana’s advice and went to night school.

“Grama was excited when she read your letter about going back to school,” I said. I spared her Grama’s exact words: “About time. Your mother is finally learning sense. Threw her education away to follow stupid religion. You better not get it in your skull that you can get ahead in life without a decent education.”

“Mama was pleased and sent me the money to come home to see you all. She was anxious for me to establish a connection with Paul. ‘You left when he was two. Now he’s four and always asking about you. He’s nothing like Jay. Caleb would have found plenty devil to beat out of him.’ And so I came home that August.”