Four harrowing and busy weeks followed Shirley’s call, during which Precious endured buffet and setback with a cheery countenance and unshakeable faith. Her dignity suffered numerous nicks and scratches from the American Consulate, whose staff, it is widely known, is globally trained to behave scornfully toward prospective immigrants, especially those whose grovelling is regarded as halfhearted.
But once it became clear that the interloping former battywiper was to be sent packing to Miami and that there was soon to be only one woman under her roof, Mildred displayed a more hospitable frame of mind and actually started holding friendly chats with Precious at the breakfast and dinner table. She even confided that ever since the birth of their son, Harold had contracted a sickly obsession with tooth extraction that sometimes drove her up the wall.
Precious remarked innocently that she didn’t know Harold had any obsessions. Why did she think Harold had founded twelve clinics over the countryside? Mildred asked pointedly. It-was for the sole purpose of providing him with countrywoman tooth to pull, which he accumulated in a shoe box like he was some kind of bizarre hobbyist. Precious said she didn’t know that Harold collected teeth, so Mildred went rummaging through Harold’s den and returned with a Bata shoe box that rattled when she walked. She pried off the lid to reveal hundreds of rotted teeth that stunk like old fish-bait.
“My heavens!” Precious gasped, peering into the box in which teeth of every shape, size, and state of decomposition were strewn in an untidy mound.
“Can you imagine? Dis is your son’s hobby!” Mildred shook her head sadly in a manner that implied faulty mothering.
“I never tell Harold to pull anybody teeth,” Precious mumbled in her own defense.
So things were better at the Kingston household and the time flew past quickly. There were a hundred little chores to tend to and a clutch of petty details to contend with. Precious made periodic trips with Harold up to the mountain house to pay Maud, brush dog head when White Dog and Red Dog came scampering to greet her, and generally check on her property. But she could not make up her mind about what to do with Theophilus’s dream house. When she strolled around the grounds and fondly recalled Theophilus’s love for mountain peak, she simply couldn’t bring herself to sell it. Plus she did not think there was another person mad enough in the entire parish to want to live in such isolation.
One day during an infrequent visit to the house, Precious idly asked Maud, “What I goin’ do with dis house, eh?”
Maud squinted and pursed her lips with deep thought. “If fire start up here, God willing,” she suggested with a crafty glint in her eye, “no amount of fire brigade goin’ reach dis hill before de house burn completely down.”
“I goin’ to write dat remark down in a book,” Precious snapped.
Maud’s eyes widened with alarm. “What book?”
“I don’t know. I only know dat dat is de very kind of remark dat need to write down in a book. I goin’ to buy an exercise book and write it down. What’s de date today?”
“Miss Precious!” Maud squealed. “Don’t write me down in no book, mum! All me say is—”
“Don’t say it again,” Precious threatened, “or I will have to write it down in two book.”
“Everything up to God, mum,” said Maud, hoping to sweet up her employer with religious argument.
“Exactly so,” seconded Precious.
And, as far as Precious was concerned, that was the end of a particularly vulgar line of thought. She would not burn down Theophilus’s dream house, and no amount of maid scheming would turn her into a firebug.
“You love to pull teeth, eh, Harold?” Precious asked her son on her last night under his roof.
She had said her goodbyes to the children, cemented an uneasy peace with Mildred, and now late into the evening with the rest of the household abed and migration staring her in the face, she was spending a final few fidgety minutes in the drawing room with her son.
He peered at her sharply. “Who tell you dat? You been talking to Mildred?”
Precious squirmed, not wanting any part in a domestic spat between her son and his wife. “I hear you have a shoe box full of teeth.”
Harold sniffed with pleasure. “And every one of them I pull out myself!” he declared proudly. “With these two hands.”
“Well,” Precious mumbled, feeling stupid, “at least you have plenty teeth to play with in you old age.”
Harold yawned, for the hour was late and he had spent the evening involved in the bustle of packing up Precious for shipment to America. Plus there had been a meal on this last night, and his belly was crammed full of egg foo yong and chop suey.
“Mummy, I sorry you and Mildred didn’t get along. But she is a woman with her own ways, you know.”
Precious shrugged. “Two woman can’t live under one roof.” She added gloomily, “Forty-seven years old and I’m going abroad for the first time in my life. Watch the plane crash tomorrow and kill me.”
Harold seemed not to have heard. He suddenly leaned forward in the chair with a strange light shining in his eyes.
“One of these days, Mummy,” he whispered after darting a furtive glance at the dark hallway over his shoulder, “I going pull one of Mildred’s teeth. You wait and see.”
“Almighty in heaven, Harold!” Precious yelped. “A husband not supposed to be sitting down in him drawing room planning to pull out his own wife teeth! You’re out of order!”
Harold shrank from this unexpected blast, looking hurt and puzzled. “So now you taking her side against me!”
“You men are impossible! Is not enough dat you always want pum-pum, now you want teeth, too! My motherly advice to you, Harold, is to leave Mildred’s mouth alone! A married woman mouth is her last refuge!”
Precious stood up to signify final opinion, stern motherly judgment, and the end of discussion. Harold remained glued to his chair, scowling and shuffling his feet like a chastised boy who thought his punishment overly harsh.
She withdrew down the dark hallway to her bedroom to lie-in bed staring fretfully at a ceiling and listening to the metronomic fluting of a whistling frog, who piped the same