‘All the child do is read and sulk. You know that?’
That is what Mama continually griped about. Not satisfied with her constant rumbling and grumbling at and about me.
‘He is seven years old, Mama. What do you expect from him?’
‘He should be running in the yard or riding a bicycle or making something out of a piece of old wood. Not sitting there on the veranda day in day out with his nose in a comic book.’
And even after I reminded her that Daphne did exactly the same thing, all she could say was, ‘He is a boy.’
So maybe I should have been relieved the day he told me he’d been out with some other boys. It seemed healthy, until he said, ‘Seeing some people Uncle Kenneth knows downtown.’
‘Downtown! With Kenneth?’
Karl immediately clammed up and buried his head further in the Green Lantern’s latest exploits.
When I asked Kenneth about it he was offhand. ‘What yu fussing yuself ’bout? It was only a visit to some people who owe me money.’
‘Owe you money? You are a thirteen-year-old schoolboy, Kenneth. Who could possibly owe you money?’
But there was no answer. He just shrugged his shoulders and walked away.
Mama was furious. ‘Who give you the right to be chastising Kenneth over anything? The way you gwaan. You so respectable yourself?’
‘I am not talking about being respectable. I am asking what Kenneth can be doing downtown for people to owe him money.’
‘You should pay better attention to what your own children doing and leave your little brother alone.’
I looked at her in amazement. ‘Mama, you don’t care what he is doing? You’re not interested in or concerned about that?’
‘What I am concerned about is my concern. Not yours.’
What I decided? The children needed more organised activities. Evenings of playing cards and chequers and snakes and ladders. Reading. Not Batman and Superman, but real books. Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, The Grapes of Wrath. Daphne playing the piano. Picking out the odd chord here and there while we sang. Not hymns from the song sheets of Mr John Wesley but popular tunes about carrying our ackee to Linstead Market, and our island in the sun. Songs from movies. Oklahoma, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, The King and I. Saturday-morning picture shows at the Carib. A Flash Gordon serial. A western. The beach on Sundays with picnics of fried chicken and potato salad.
But I still didn’t know how to be with them. Mui even recoiled from my hand the day she got sunburnt and I tried to rub aloe vera on her back.
‘Get Ethyl to do it.’
‘I can do this, Mui.’
‘No, Mama. I don’t like the feel.’
My own daughter couldn’t bear for me to touch her. And then I thought it must run in the family. Because I couldn’t remember, not even once, when my mother had touched me. Maybe to rub white rum on my back to stop me from catching a chill. Or Tiger Balm on my forehead for a headache. Vicks on my chest for a cough. Not even holding the towel over my head while I lowered to the bowl of steaming concoction that would unblock my nose. No. That was all Sissy, who washed and dressed my cuts, and soothed my bruises, and brushed my hair, and tidied my skirt to make it hang just right.
As far as conversation was concerned, that was a complete and utter disaster. ‘Are you OK?’ ‘Good day at school?’ ‘Much homework?’ ‘Anything to tell me?’ It was all pointless, empty, noise. And nothing the children ever seemed inclined to respond to. Pathetic, really. But that was how we went on. Letting our near-silence cement itself, while I listened to Mui quiz Ethyl about everything, from where the months on the calendar come from to why a lizard’s tail continues to wriggle after you cut it off. Questions Ethyl had no answers to.
Sometimes she asked Ethyl about her life in the country, and why her mother had sent her to work in Kingston and what it was like to live in a city instead of roaming free through the open land and banana groves of Portland. Ethyl’s answers, despite her trying to dress them up, always sounded sad. There was an emptiness in her heart when she compared then and now, covered over with a cheery tone to make sure that ‘Miss Mui’ knew how grateful Ethyl was for her job and living in the house, and caring for ‘a beautiful young miss like you’. Listening to it reminded me of me and Sissy. Even more so the day I saw Mui standing at the ironing board while Ethyl arranged the pillowcase for her to press. And then I remembered the look of freedom and independence on Sissy’s face the first time I visited her at her boarding house in Franklyn Town.
I was leaning over Mui’s shoulder as she sat at the table with Hampton.
‘Because I want you to come with me.’
‘Why?’ she asked, looking up from the square of red rice paper she was busy cutting and arranging to be pasted on to the bamboo frame. For the kite she and Hampton were building together.
‘Because you want to see Aunt Daphne and Grandma, don’t you?’
‘No.’
Hampton raised his brows but said nothing.
‘Mui, you spend so much time down here, trailing after Zhang with your tai chi lessons and questions about China. And pestering Hampton to make kites and karts and take you to the beach. Don’t you think it would be nice to go uptown for a change?’
‘I am happy here.’ She stood up. Brushed her sticky hands on her dress and shook her head to reposition her plaits down her back. ‘Do you know what a revolution is?’
‘What?’
‘It is when the masses say enough is enough. The people who don’t have any power. They say no more. We are tired of having nothing. Tired of being told what to do by other people. Tired of being poor and kept down with no hope. Tired of being oppressed. That is their plight.’
‘Their plight?’
‘Yes, Mommy. Plight. The plight of the people. In this country. Jamaica. Land we love.’
‘Well that’s fine but what I’d like you to do right now is gather together whatever you want to take with you and get in the car.’
‘You don’t care?’
‘About the poor people?’
‘Or my plight?’
Hampton snorted as he started to clear away and tidy up. Putting the scissors and glue in the box with the paper remnants.
‘Yes, I do,’ I said. And I did. Underneath my worries of motherhood, and regret about what happened in Back-O-Wall, and shame over Vincent and Tilly. And Isaac. ‘And it is important. But you are not a part of the plight, Mui. You are a child who should be more interested in puzzles and games.’
Karl walked over to us. Slowly but deliberately.
‘Don’t yu want to see Ethyl?’
And that is how we managed to set off to Lady Musgrave Road. With Mui sitting in the front gazing out of the side window and Karl sitting in the back. Reading a comic book. In the silent car. By the time we reached Cross Roads I’d had enough and turned on the radio.
‘Do you know where Karl and Kenneth went?’
‘No, Mommy.’
‘I think you do know, Mui. And you need to tell me right now. This instant.’
Her lips were sealed. Determined not to be a turncoat like me. Mama was standing behind me.
‘You speak up now, young lady, before I take a strap to you.’
I turned my head. ‘Nobody is taking a strap to her. Especially not you.’
‘If you say so, but you still need her to open her mouth.’ She kissed her teeth and walked away.
I tried once again. ‘It has been dark for hours, Mui. I am worried about them, that is all. Please tell me where they went and at what time.’
‘I told you. I don’t know.’
The last thing I wanted was to have to telephone Pao. I even thought about getting in the car and driving around but what would be the point? I had no idea where to begin.
‘Mama, you don’t know where Kenneth hangs out?’ I was shouting to her from the dining room where I was still wrangling with the poker-faced Mui.
‘Hangs out? What kind of language is that?’
I took a deep breath. An innocent nine-year-old child was being dragged around town by a fifteen-year-old tearaway and she was worried about my language.
She shouted back from the piano room. ‘You should concentrate on getting your stubborn daughter to tell you what she knows. That would be more useful than her sermons about the plight of the poor. And how Jamaica will rise up in revolution.’
At eleven pm, after they had been gone since early afternoon, I decided to call the police.
‘I will send a constable to gather the particulars.’ That is what the voice at the other end of the line told me. But at three am there was still no officer at the door even though I’d called them again at one o’clock to impress upon them the age of the children, at which point the desk officer said, ‘We dealing with something else right now. I will send someone over as soon as I can, but honestly it may be morning before that happen.’
So I sat on the veranda in the dark, wrapped in a shawl, listening to the chirping of the crickets and slapping away every mosquito that tried to settle on my arm or neck. And as daylight broke I suddenly awakened and looked up to see Kenneth and Karl sauntering up the driveway together. Actually I heard their voices first. Cheerfully chatting away as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
I stood up as they reached the top of the steps. ‘Hello, Mommy.’
‘Hello? That is what you have to say to me at six-thirty in the morning?’
He looked surprised, as if my anxiety was completely uncalled for. Irrational hysteria. Kenneth piped up, ‘Is my fault, Fay. Sorry. Just a little thing that tek an unexpected turn. Married to Pao yu must be used to dat.’ And then as he swaggered past me, removing his hand from his pocket to open the door, ‘Respect to di man.’
Karl followed him into the house, looking back at me as I stood there in the growing light of dawn. I was relieved I hadn’t called Pao and alerted him to the way Kenneth was following in his footsteps.
When I finally got to the bottom of it?
‘An illegal card game, Karl?’
‘Uncle Kenneth wasn’t doing anything, Mommy. Just serving a few drinks. That was all.’
‘And you didn’t think there was anything wrong with that?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘The police coming and arresting everyone. That is what you said, isn’t it? Why you had to spend the night under the house and wait for the buses to start running again.’
He looked at me and sighed. I couldn’t even say it was with any sense of remorse. It was more like impatience at my not being able to understand the harmless events that led to him and Kenneth hiding out with the dealer. A rogue who knew to slide out of the back door at precisely the right moment, while the police turned the place upside down searching for money and contraband and then stationed themselves inside and out in order to apprehend the men who continued to arrive throughout the night for, according to Karl, just a game of cards.
‘People play cards all the time. And give each other money. The police don’t care. Sometimes they do it themselves. What you are making such a fuss about?’
‘You are nine years old, Karl, and you were out all night with criminals. What was I supposed to do?’
‘If you were that worried you should have called my father. It would have been better than calling the police.’ I glared at him.
After a while of standing there in silence he said, in a low repentant tone, ‘I love you, Mommy.’
I wanted to say ‘I love you too’ but I didn’t. It seemed so shallow to say it to him right after he’d said it to me.
Mui was sitting on the back steps playing with her paper dolls.
‘I don’t like you shouting at him like that.’
‘I wasn’t shouting.’
‘You were.’
I sat down on the step next to her. ‘He is getting into bad ways, Mui.’
She fiddled with a doll. Lifting the tabs to remove the dress and replacing it with another. ‘He didn’t do anything. He was just following behind. He is not a criminal.’ She paused. And then, turning her head ever so slightly towards me, she added, ‘And neither is my papa.’
Karl stepped out of the back door. Walked over and rested his hand on her shoulder.
‘Want to tek a swim?’
Mui shot to her feet immediately, putting the paper dolls back in the shoebox and tucking it under her arm as she raced inside to collect her swimwear. Shouting to him, ‘Last one in the pool is a ninny.’
The next time I saw Michael I told him about it. ‘He is coming up for his first communion, Michael. Don’t the discussions with the other children include talking about things like this?’
‘In all honesty? No. Not many children share Karl’s experiences. Not ones that come to Mass and Bible study classes anyway. His situation is unusual, Fay. Let’s face it.’
‘You have no idea what is usual or unusual.’ I felt crotchety at his offhandedness. ‘So what does he talk to you about?’
Michael smiled. A cheeky sort of grin. Most unpriestlike. ‘Come. You know that is between him and me.’
My irritation welled up. ‘Not every conversation is a confession.’
He smiled again. Tight-lipped this time. ‘Don’t frown like that. If there was anything to be concerned about I would tell you. Honestly.’
So I decided to leave it alone. Decided to believe that Michael knew best. Decided to trust his priestly judgement. Like a good Catholic.
And because I was at Bishop’s Lodge. Downtown, feeling shaky, I decided to go to Franklyn Town and see Sissy even though she had told me so many years back not to visit her at the boarding house. And I had obeyed. But that day, for no good reason, I hopped on to the cross-town bus and paid my fare.
‘What I tell yu about coming here? Didn’t I tell yu?’
‘You did, Sissy. You did.’
‘So wat dis?’
She was angry. Seriously put out at seeing me standing there at her front door.
‘So yu not going to invite me in?’
She huffed and puffed, looking past me to across the street for inspiration. And then she said, ‘Well, time come to everything.’
She made coffee. We sat in the yard out back. Oddly.
‘Something wrong with the chairs on your veranda?’
‘Yu come here to see me or sit on my veranda chair?’
So I shut up and enjoyed the cool breeze in the yard and talked about Karl and Mui, and how I had distanced myself from them because I didn’t want to harm them.
She choked slightly on the smoke from her pipe. Suppressing a laugh that was more a snort. ‘Which mother never do that?’ She took another puff. ‘Since di beginning a time, Fay. The beginning a time.’
Sissy’s point was that every mother damages her children. That is life. That is where our wounds come from. Unintentionally. Unavoidably. In small ways and sometimes in colossal ones but always there is impact. Because we are young and their children, and expecting so much from them. Perhaps too much.
‘So yu see, it cyan be helped. You being absent in body or spirit not saving dem from nothing. It just meking some other something for dem to have feelings about.’ She looked over at me. ‘When deh growed. Not that yu can ever guess what yu coming and going mean to dem. Dat is a mystery. All yu can do is be true to yuself. Be who yu are in all yu glory and Him upstairs will tek care a everything else.’ She laughed. A genuine chuckle this time. And slapped herself on the thigh. ‘Not that I want to start sounding like yu mother.’
We finished our coffee. ‘What gwaan is what gwaan. Deh will have to mek sense a it themselves. Just di same way yu doing dat very same thing right now.’
It wasn’t until I was leaving that I discovered the reason Sissy told me to stop coming to the boarding house. Because across the street, in broad daylight, stood my father. On the veranda. Talking to some woman. Standing so close to her, so relaxed and comfortable, I knew it wasn’t a chance encounter.
I looked at Sissy. ‘Gloria Campbell,’ she said.
‘Gloria Campbell? Pao’s whore?’
‘Yu always know he know her. Dat is how come she end up here. After he find her wandering di street when she lose her live-in domestic job. And he bring her to me to board.’
I didn’t say anything. Actually, I didn’t know. How would I? Who was going to tell me?
‘Yu even meet di sister long time back. On dis veranda right here when she come back from school one day.’
I stepped back inside the house in case Papa should look over and see me. ‘Is he a regular customer?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. But deh have a lot a communication, dat is fi sure.’