When the time came to go back to school it was a relief. Just to leave the house and catch the bus to Old Hope Road because that was where Immaculate moved to after the fire burnt down the school in Duke Street. But that was it. The journey. Because when I got there it was all the same faces. All the same girls who had stared and laughed at me on that last afternoon ages back, come up from the prep school because we were all twelve years old now. Hazel Brown, Henrietta Thompson, even Marjorie Williams who’d been standing at the desk right next to mine when it happened, and seated next to me again in our alphabetical order. Sister Angelica wasn’t there, though. Thank heaven. I don’t think I could have spent another year with her.
The lessons. English language, literature and grammar. Algebra, geometry and arithmetic. Geography. Biology. Spanish and Latin. Elocution and penmanship. And I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on. It seemed like in my absence these girls had taken a giant leap the likes of which I could only dream about. They talked about Virgil and Shakespeare, particles and participles, acute and obtuse angles, temperate climates and enzymes like they were discussing what they’d had for breakfast. And of course, everything was como estas and muy bien. It sent me rushing home straight away at two o’clock every day to see what I could do to save myself from further embarrassment. Stanley helped as best he could but my shame stopped me from asking him the things I felt convinced I should have known but didn’t.
‘It cyan be so bad, Miss Fay. Yu only been gone little over fifteen months. How much learning can deh do in dat time? And still in di prep school.’
‘I’m telling you, Sissy. They all know everything.’
She finished clearing away the plate on which I’d just eaten my corned-beef sandwich. ‘No. Cyan be so. Yu too bright for dem to all know everything and you nuh know nothing. Yu must know more than yu think yu do.’
It seemed to make sense but it didn’t make me feel any better. Especially since half the time I was studying in the locked piano room, with hands sore from the sting of Mama’s cane and a troubled mind turning over and over the events of the day wondering if I could have prevented her wrath by doing or saying something different. Different words. Maybe a different tone. Or just been different. Somehow. If only I knew how. If only I could read her mind. If only I could understand why a mother who loved her child would treat her this way.
But I couldn’t. So I decided to avoid her. If Mama was going to be out, rush home as quickly as possible, go straight to my room and do my homework. Do not emerge until dinnertime. If Mama was going to be in, dawdle. Stay in the school yard under the big guinep tree. Slip my legs over the board seat and rest my books on the bench, after wiping away the crumbs from the lunchtime sandwiches. But, and this was crucial, do not stay too long. Not so long that I would risk hearing her voice on entering the house: ‘Where have you been until this hour, madam?’
And I would say, ‘At school, Mama.’
And she would say, ‘The school day finishes at two o’clock. Two pm precisely. You think I don’t know that?’
‘After-school activities, Mama.’
‘I didn’t pay for any activities. If you want activities join the Girl Guides. Until then, you will make your way home after school and be here where you are supposed to be.’ And after a short pause: ‘Yu hear me?’
On other days, she would be waiting for me in the piano room, cane in hand.
‘Get yourself in here, madam.’ And with every swing of her arm she would shriek, ‘You-stay-out-all-hours, this-is-what-you-get.’ A stroke of bamboo for each and every syllable.
Sometimes Miss Allen would even sit in the corner and watch. Satisfying herself that her investment was being put to good use. Because it was Miss Allen who always bought Mama the next cane every time one split or broke. And if I was let go as opposed to locked in, I would hear them talk. Loud and carefree like it didn’t matter to them who might be listening.
‘Lord, give me strength.’ That would be Mama.
‘The devil’s work,’ Miss Allen would say. ‘Yu know di kinda trouble young girls get up to dese days?’
‘Yu telling me? Think I don’t know a daughter is an affliction. The wage of sin.’
‘Whose sin, Cicely? Not yours, I know dat fah sure.’
‘Di sin a di father. Di sin dat pass down from generation to generation. Since Adam and Eve. Di original sin dat child is determined to carry on. You mark my words. She have it in her.’
‘I can see that, Cicely. I can see that.’
The sin of the father? My father? Is that what she meant? So I searched my mind for anything and everything that Papa had ever said to me. Every place we had been. His grocery store, the cookhouse, the bakery, the betting shop to pay a debt or to collect his winnings. The constant walking from store to Chinatown store. The fresh coconut water and jelly, pineapple tarts, shaved ice with cane syrup. Rice or noodles. Shao bow. Wah moy. Dried shrimps. Instructions on how to parcel the rice and flour and sugar. How to fold the strong brown paper to wrap the perfect bag. How to cut a perfect two or four or six ounces of butter. How to weigh a perfect four or eight ounces of saltfish.
I thought about the day he took me to Immaculate to be interviewed by Sister Ignatius so she could assure herself that I was suitable material for the challenges and rewards the school had to offer. That is how she put it. Never mind that Papa was paying the fees. All that happened there was talk and more talk because I had already taken the entrance exam and, by some miracle, had passed it.
I replayed these times with Papa over and over in my mind. Like a movie on a loop. But there was nothing. Nothing to constitute the sin of the father. What was I searching for anyway?
* * *
The first time I went to see Madam Chin-Loy, Papa took me there himself. In a buggy. Under the canopy to shelter us from the worst of the rain. ‘I don’t want your mama getting herself into a fluster. Especially if Peggy decide not to take you on. No point in that.’
‘Is she a good teacher, Papa?’
‘The best private tutor in Chinatown.’ He smiled at me. A broad grin from ear to ear. ‘Teacher to the best of them. For years and years.’ He patted my knee. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing. What Peggy Chin-Loy don’t know about school lessons not worth knowing.’
She tested me. Reading, writing and arithmetic. With each passage and sum more difficult than the previous one. Books taken from the pile on her desk. The specific pages already marked with small pieces of blue card sticking out of the top. ‘Read from the paragraph beginning …’ Or, ‘What do you understand the writer to be saying?’ Or, ‘Now write something for me. Perhaps a poem you can remember or a chronicle of what you did yesterday.’ We were sitting in her little office overlooking the dainty but colourful backyard. Orderly. Like her. With her grey hair in a neat bun and her tidy bookshelves, and precise handwriting. With a black-ink pen noting down my every utterance. Finally, she took the paper from me. Addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. Rubbing her forehead as she passed her eyes over it.
Then she stood and said, ‘Let us step outside.’
Papa got to his feet as soon as she opened the door. ‘Not yet, Henry.’ She didn’t even stop walking. Just waved her arm in the air to tell him to sit down again.
In the dining room, lunch had been set for one.
‘Me, miss?’
‘Do you see anyone else here?’
So I sat down in front of the plate and knife and fork. And slowly worked my way through the warm macaroni cheese and salad. Remembering to chew with my mouth closed, and to wipe my lips on the napkin so as not to leave a greasy smudge on the glass as I sipped the lemonade. And Madam Chin-Loy watched. Without saying a single word to me.
Afterwards, she told Papa to bring me to her twice a week. Mondays and Wednesdays. From three to five pm. And then she handed him an envelope with a note of her charges.
On the way home I asked him about the Girl Guides.
‘Girl Guides, Fay? You have time for that?’
The day Marjorie Williams almost drowned at Sigarney beach was the day I became the class heroine. Because of all the little Girl Guides I was the only one who actually knew how to swim. Everybody else just tricked people by walking along the seafloor swishing their arms in the water. The ridiculous part was she was only a few inches out of her depth. Waving her arms about she was. So at first it wasn’t even clear she was in trouble, more like she was showing off to us how far out she could go. The Guide mistress was still unloading the picnic from the bus. And in truth, Marjorie should not have been in the water. She, like the rest of us, had been told to wait.
As soon as I realised she wasn’t fooling, I ran into the sea and swam like I had done so many times before in the pool at home. When I reached her I put my arm across her chest and gripped her in her armpit. And then I towed her back to shore. How I knew what to do? Playing with Stanley.
After that, any help I needed with a2+b2=c2, the war in Latium, or the difference between fate and divine intervention, was mine only for the asking. And Marjorie Williams became my first schoolfriend. So much so that six months later she invited me to her birthday party. Never before had I been so honoured. But Mama said no. I wasn’t going to any party.
‘Next thing you know boys swarming all over the place. And if I know anything, then I know that one thing will always lead to another.’
‘I am thirteen years old, Mama. It is a little girl’s birthday party.’ The word ‘please’ was on the tip of my tongue but I didn’t say it. I’d promised myself never to plead with her for anything. So I didn’t go. The Saturday afternoon came and went with me sitting on the veranda looking out at the lawn wondering what Marjorie, Hazel, Henrietta and all the others were doing. When we went back to school on Monday they were all full of the fun and games they’d enjoyed. I felt left out. Excluded.
‘Shame you missed it, Fay. It was really good.’
‘Thank you, Marjorie. Maybe next time.’
But there was never to be a next time because after that a slow and gradual distance grew between us until we were reduced to nodding terms. My regret? That I hadn’t made the effort to offer any excuse or explanation. I’d simply said, ‘I can’t come.’ Why? Because I was too ashamed to admit that after Papa had talked her into letting me go, Mama refused to buy a present and forbade him from doing so. Why didn’t I make up a lie? I don’t know. What I did instead on that Saturday afternoon was sit silently on my own feeling sorry for myself. Thinking about how I hurt Sissy by turning up my nose at her suggestion that she find a gift for me because I knew that whatever she came up with would look pitiful next to the lavish offerings of my classmates.
It didn’t matter anyway because the worry in the house wasn’t about me. It was about the strikes and riots that were bringing Kingston to a standstill. It was about the police and soldiers who didn’t seem able to do anything to stop or control the marauding crowds that wandered the streets causing mayhem including looting Chinese shops and burning some of them to the ground. It was about the governor declaring a state of emergency and Mama’s fear that my father would lose his fortune.
That was when Sissy decided to leave me. I knew it was going to happen the moment I saw the red-skin man standing on the doorstep, dressed in a brown suit with his hat in hand.
‘I am looking for Miss Florette Cecilia Wint.’
‘Sorry, mister. Nobody called that living here.’
Mama brushed me aside. ‘And what business would you have with her?’
‘It is of a personal nature, madam. Does Miss Wint reside here?’
The man was a lawyer under instruction from solicitors, so they said, in England. And what he wanted was to tell Sissy that her father had died and left her money. Quite a tidy sum, it turned out, because her father was an Englishman who went back to his home leaving Sissy with her mama in West Kingston, where he found her. But even after her mother passed and Sissy went into service, her father still made it his business to have somebody track her down and give her the chance of a new life. That is how much money it was.
‘A boarding house, Miss Fay. What I always dreamed of. Wid young ladies staying there and being fed and looked after. Meking a home for dem dat maybe deh wouldn’t otherwise have.’
I was sitting on the chair in the kitchen.
‘Yu leaving me, Sissy?’
She stooped before me and took my hands in hers. ‘Yu want me to be a maid my whole life? Fetching and carrying after people morning till night, six and a half days a week. Never having my own roof over my head.’ She pointed upwards. ‘Never being able to decide for myself what it is I want to do. Is that what you want for me, Miss Fay?’
I couldn’t argue with her. Even I could see that she would have a better life in her boarding house than the one she had with me.
‘Deh will find someone else to look after yu. And she will be fine, Miss Fay. Just fine. And then one day yu will grow up and you will leave her. And until then yu can come visit me at di boarding house anytime yu want.’ She smiled and stood up.
‘I going miss yu, though, Sissy,’ I said, looking up at her with tears in my eyes.
‘Yu never have to miss me.’ She bent down and kissed me on the forehead. ‘All yu have to do is close yu eyes and hold on to dis and I will be there.’ She pressed into my hand a doll made from a lollipop stick dressed in a traditional Jamaican costume of red and white, with a black face and a bandanna wrapped around her head.
‘Does she have a name?’ I asked.
‘What yu want call her?’
I thought and then I said, ‘Athena.’
‘Athena?’
‘She is the goddess of wisdom and courage.’
‘Good name.’
After that, I couldn’t breathe. My lungs wouldn’t fill. All I had was a shallow in and out breath. In and out. In and out, while I was gasping for air. I came over tired as well. Couldn’t keep my eyes open. All I wanted to do was sleep even though I pinched myself to stay awake so that I could share with Sissy every last minute she had left in this house. Willing the days to stop passing; imagining that if I could hold my breath for long enough I could make time stand still and she would not have to go. Or maybe make myself sick to keep her here. But it didn’t work.
The day she left I sat in her room and watched her pack the small brown cardboard grip, wondering how it could be that she had so few things. Two cotton dresses, and a third which she called her Sunday frock. Some underwear that she turned her back to me when she folded. A rattan hat with a bright yellow ribbon tied around it. Her church bonnet, so she said, even though I couldn’t remember ever seeing Sissy go to church. An ancient but well-polished pair of brown and white shoes. The black and white uniforms Mama had given her were washed and ironed, and hanging on the rail. And the sensible black shoes were on her feet. Mama said she could keep them. Thirteen years of service and that is all she had to show for it.
When the taxi arrived I stood on the veranda steps while the driver loaded Sissy’s case. And even though my chest felt like someone had tied a belt around it and pulled it tight, and my eyes prickled from being forced wide open, I didn’t cry.
Sissy said goodbye to Mama and nodded her head at me before walking slowly to the Checker Cab. And then at the last minute she turned around and came back. Climbing the steps until she reached the one just below me where she stopped and enclosed me in her arms. Not close like she would usually, but loose. And then she leant into my ear and whispered, ‘You are perfect. Don’t let anybody mek yu forget it.’ And then she let me go and walked to the waiting car. Got in and shut the door. And it drove away.
Mama looked at me with that ‘What did she say to you?’ question on her face but I didn’t tell her, I just turned around and went inside to my room where I threw myself on to my bed and sobbed. Away from Mama’s prying and disapproving eyes.
The next week I caught the bus after school and went to Franklyn Town to visit Sissy in her boarding house. It was a huge ramshackle place with bedrooms galore and bathrooms and a kitchen that had seen better days. ‘Yu right,’ she said. ‘It not much. But it can fix up. Some hammer and nail. A lick a paint. You wait and see.’
I smiled. Mostly because, despite the condition of the house, Sissy’s happiness was written all over her. Her joy was absolute and complete.
‘Come.’ She led me out into the small backyard. ‘Even dis going turn beautiful. Nice and cool and shady for all di young ladies dat going sit out here and read their book or do their embroidery.’
Afterwards, resting in the creaking veranda chairs while we sipped some cold sorrel, Sissy reached into her pocket and pulled out a clay pipe. Stuck it in her mouth and lit it.
‘Smoking, Sissy?’ I said in shock.
She laughed. ‘A secret yu mama would never have approved of.’ She took a puff and released the smoke slowly. ‘But now, I am my own woman. Do any damn thing I like.’ Looking at me out of the corner of her eye to check how I felt about her saying ‘damn’.
I had never seen Sissy like that before. With her greying hair tied in a bun that was still loose with stray strands. A casual, floral, cotton frock with a break-neck and patch pockets. And slippers. Flat, open-toed slippers. The pipe in her mouth was nothing. It was the expression on her face that said it all. Sissy was free.
I was clutching Athena in my hand the morning I woke up to discover I was bleeding to death. All over the white sheets. Lying there overcome with grief while Pearl was knocking on the door telling me it was time to get ready for school.
‘Yu going to be late, Miss Fay. And yu know the Sisters nuh like that.’
I didn’t answer. Instead, I ran my fingers over the red wetness in the bed. And at the edges of the circles now turning brown and hard in their dryness.
‘Miss Fay. Miss Fay.’ The knocking grew louder. More insistent.
‘I can’t come out, Pearl. I’m dying.’ That is when she opened the door, marched over to the bed and pulled back the bedspread and top sheet.
Pearl helped me to clean up and sent me to Mother Murphy who showed me what to do with the elastic and how to fold the napkin and fit it between my legs. And when they are soiled, she told me, put them to soak in the covered bucket under your bed and I will see to them. And that was when I finally understood what Mother Murphy did, because all my life I’d never seen her do anything other than sit on a stool in the yard and argue with the other maids. Sit and argue, and rub coconut oil on her skin because it was so dry it was practically dropping off her. Why Papa kept her on? Because ‘Mother Murphy too old to go anywhere else’. That’s what he said.
So for five days once a month Mother Murphy collected the bucket from under my bed and replaced it empty and disinfected. And the napkins washed and bleached white, neatly folded in the bottom of my drawer.
When I told Sissy about it she wasn’t surprised. She said I was a woman now.
‘Mother Murphy explain to yu ’bout babies?’
‘Babies?’
‘Yu mama then?’
I just opened my eyes wide and looked at her. She took the pipe from her mouth and spat brown saliva over the veranda railing into the yard. And then she told me how it would come to be that one day I would make a baby. But I didn’t believe her. It didn’t seem likely that I would ever want to do a thing like that with a man, or that something as big as a baby could possibly get pushed out of a person. Especially not out of me.
* * *
As soon as the war started, Stanley went straight away to find out if he could join the Royal Air Force. They said he had to take some tests and have a medical examination, which he did and passed.
‘So yu going to England, Stanley? To fly an aeroplane?’
‘It a war.’
‘There not no war here in Jamaica.’
‘Everybody got to make their contribution, Fay.’
I stared across at him sitting next to me by the pool. Fiddling with his toes he was, like he couldn’t bring himself to look me in the face.
‘Yu think yu ever going come back?’
‘Not if they kill me.’
‘Yu want to die, Stanley? Is that what yu want? Yu only twenty-one years old and yu want to die.’
‘I never said that.’ He paused. Then he lifted his head towards me. ‘But it a war. That is what happen.’
I breathed in and out three times. To steady myself. ‘Tell me something.’
‘What?’
‘Tell me what happen that day I come in the living room when Mama was talking to yu.’
‘That such a long time ago, Fay.’
‘Maybe, but everything changed after that. How you were with her. How she was with me. I know it was something bad, Stanley.’
‘What difference it mek now?’
‘I need to know because yu going to war and maybe never coming back and I cyan spend the rest of my life wondering if it was something to do with me. Like if I am such an evil person that whatever went on could affect everybody so bad.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish. Yu not evil. I already tell yu it had nothing to do with you. Didn’t I already tell yu that? Long time back.’
‘Don’t just say that. Tell me something that make sense. Explain it to me.’
So he told me that Mama’s own papa had forced himself on her and that was how come she get pregnant and give birth to him. That Mr Johnson, whose name was also Stanley, was his father and his grandfather at the same time.
‘That is what she tell yu that day?’
‘I just told you.’
And then the true horror of it took hold of me. ‘He do that to her? His own daughter?’
‘More than once, Fay. Over and over.’
‘And she was just little more than a child?’
‘A child that was old enough to know better.’
‘Yu nuh feel sorry for her?’
‘Sorry? For her?’ He stood up to walk away.
‘No, Stanley. Wait.’ I grabbed his leg and forced him to sit down again.
Then he said, ‘She should have run away. That is what any self-respecting woman would have done.’
‘Run away to where?’
‘I dunno. Somewhere. Anywhere. That is what she should have done. Or otherwise stick a knife in his ribs.’
‘Really? Yu think so?’
He stood up again. ‘Enough.’
‘One more thing, Stanley.’ He looked down at me. ‘That time. Just before she started beating me. When I came into the bedroom and she was stroking your back and humming to yu.’
His brows furrowed. ‘I don’t know what yu mean.’
‘And I ran off but never said anything to anybody. And then a few days later she started beating me.’
‘Because of your hair?’
‘No. Not that.’
He thought about it and then he said, ‘Nothing happened.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Like what? What you think happen?’
‘I don’t know, Stanley. That is why I am asking you.’
He leant over and picked up his towel. And then, walking away, he said again, ‘Nothing happened.’
Stanley packed his bags and got on the boat. And he sailed out of Kingston harbour at six-thirty in the morning just as the sun was rising to light up the day. And while Mama lay in her bed, Papa and I stood on the dock and waved to his back because he never looked around. He just strode up the gangplank and disappeared. After all, he had told us not to come. But Papa insisted and I pleaded with him to let me along.
The night before he left, Stanley promised to write. The night after, the house was empty and silent. Dark and dismal like a hollow cavern.
His first letter came a few weeks later. It was short and cheerful. He said England was fine. Different. He was stationed just outside London where he had everything he needed and life was good. But he wasn’t flying any aeroplane. He was working in the stores.