Golden Child, page 5
Now, again, it is morning: the daytime vendors have rolled back into place; women laden with bags get out of maxi taxis and make their way up to the wards to visit sick relatives. Clyde sits on the steps in the shade, watching how the schoolboys, stopping at the vendors on their way to school, eye up the girls; how the girls hitch their skirts above their knees, flick their hair around. A nun passes them and says something, and then they all start tucking their shirts in and holding out their dollars to the vendor to get their soft drinks. Clyde is watching all this, and noticing how St Saviour’s boys look different, more intelligent, better behaved than the others, when the door in the corridor opens and someone comes up behind him.
‘Deyalsingh?’
He gets up, dusting off his pants. ‘Right here.’
‘The first baby’s born. A boy!’
‘A boy!’ he says. The people listening on the steps nearby start cheering, clapping Clyde on the back.
‘It’s your first child?’ someone asks.
‘First one,’ Clyde says.
‘He need a drink,’ a man says, a fattish man in a red t-shirt. He taps a younger man on the shoulder. ‘Go down by the vendors and see if you could get him a cold Carib. Whole night the man waiting here.’
‘Hello,’ the doctor says. ‘Hello. I am talking.’
‘Sorry,’ Clyde says. ‘I listening. You-all, hush. Let the doctor speak.’
‘We having some trouble with the second one. But Joy is OK.’
‘Good, very good.’
‘We’ll get it out, don’t worry. And then we’ll see.’
‘OK, doc. You go. I will wait here.’
Clyde comes up the steps. In the corridor, outside the door to the ward, are an older woman with a basket and a pregnant girl in a flimsy pink vest. Clyde puts his hands in his pockets, walks past a few chairs pushed against the wall, past an abandoned mop and bucket, to the far end of the corridor where there is a sick-looking banana tree and a rusted water tank. He turns and comes back: past the bucket, past the chairs, past the woman and girl and the door to the ward. The little crowd of people has drifted away from the steps; a few stray dogs are nosing amongst the rubbish they have left behind. Clyde turns and walks back. Back and forward, forward and back.
‘Sit down,’ the older woman says to him, after a while. ‘You making people anxious.’
She fishes around in her basket, pulls out some food wrapped in tinfoil, hands it to him. It is a sweet-cake, still warm from the oven, grains of brown sugar stuck to the top. The pregnant girl doubles over, gasps. Clyde sits, eats. The girl’s face is like a dead person’s. Clyde looks away.
‘Walk,’ the woman commands the girl. ‘You’s the one who need to walk.’ The girl walks slowly, resting one hand on the wall. The straps of her vest slip down her shoulders.
‘They ent come out to tell you anything yet, boy,’ the woman says, after a while.
‘No.’
She sucks something out of her teeth, shakes her head.
‘What?’ says Clyde.
‘Something wrong,’ she says.
The girl starts crying out. Clyde cannot listen to this. He goes back out to the brightness of the steps outside and sits and watches the people passing in front on Charlotte Street. Office workers in their long-sleeved shirts; ladies in high-heels and make-up, all off to air-conditioned offices; men with produce loaded into the backs of their pick-up trucks, to sell downtown; women laden with shopping bags.
‘Mr Deyalsingh,’ the doctor calls, behind him.
The stray dogs look up at him as he slowly goes up the steps, draw in their paws and tails to let him pass. The doctor leads him past the ward, through another door at the far end of the corridor, into a small room with no proper window, just one glass louvre high up on the wall near the ceiling. Joy’s uncle, Uncle Vishnu, is there: Clyde is used to seeing him in shortpants and t-shirt, but right now Uncle Vishnu is in his doctor’s clothes, black pants and a white shirt-jac. He smiles as he shakes Clyde’s hand, and says congratulations, but there’s no old-talk; Clyde stands to one side, trying not to look at the baby lying in a sort of plastic box in the middle. It’s smaller than he expected, with blue veins visible across its chest, its arms, its upturned palms. It’s lying on its back, its head turned a little to the side. Joy and the other baby aren’t there.
Deprived of oxygen, the first doctor is saying. Possible mental retardation. Cord wrapped around the neck. Clyde raises his chin, trying to get some air from the louvre. There should be a proper window in this room. The doctors talk about many things – forceps, heart rates, contractions. Mental retardation? His heart is beating very fast. There is nowhere to sit down. While the other doctor talks, Uncle Vishnu’s eyes are fixed on the baby. He touches his fingertips all over the small body, pressing, tapping, listening. Clyde starts to sweat. Finally Uncle Vishnu goes to the sink, washes his hands, and then stands back, still looking at the baby, stroking his beard.
‘Well?’ Clyde says. He speaks louder than he means to. ‘What you think?’
For a moment, Uncle Vishnu doesn’t reply.
‘What?’ says Clyde. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t see any abnormality,’ Uncle Vishnu says. But he stands there for a few moments more, stroking his beard, watching the baby. It is as if he knows there must be something wrong with it, Clyde thinks, he just cannot work out what it is.
*
That week, while Joy stays in hospital recovering, Clyde and Joy’s mother, Mousey, get the house ready for her and the babies to come home. He arranges with the foreman to get to work early and leave just after lunch. He goes to the hardware store in Arima, buys cans of paint in ‘Apple Green’ and ‘Baby Blue’; he borrows paintbrushes, rollers, ladders, cloths; drags the furniture away from the walls. While he paints, Mousey stands at the concrete sink outside, just under the kitchen window, doing the washing: curtains, clothes, sheets, towels, diapers, dishcloths, every single thing, she says, must be washed before the babies come home. Mousey has been living with Clyde and Joy in La Sagesse Trace for a while now: it was only meant to be a temporary arrangement while she was getting over pneumonia, but Joy likes having her here so she hasn’t left. She’s in her sixties, Mousey, small and thin and tireless, with long grey hair that she washes twice a week with sap from a cactus plant and then winds into a bun. She fills the sink with water, taps in the Breeze washing powder and mixes with her hand until there is a sinkful of white suds. Then she gathers the sheets into a bundle between her fists and rubs it against the ridges on the sloping side of the sink. Frush-frush-frush, it goes. Clyde finds himself painting in time with her rhythm. Frush-frush-frush. She kneads the bundle to let a different part reach the ridges.
Frush-frush-frush.
Knead.
Frush-frush-frush.
The Chin Lees offer their washing line for extra space; so do the Bartholomews next to them, and Mrs des Vignes in the next house down. All along La Sagesse Trace, sheets, blinding white in the midday sun, flap on the washing lines.
Uncle Vishnu brings a cot from Joy’s older brother who’s finished with it, and a vinyl-covered mattress for the cot, and a brand-new fan still wrapped in plastic. The old women in saris – aunts, sisters, friends; there are so many of them that Clyde loses track of who’s who – arrive, with tiny baby-clothes that they hold up to each other and squeal at. They bring big iron pots and jars of spices, and install themselves in the kitchen. When Clyde comes back from the hospital with Joy and the babies, the house is spotless and the big iron pots are full of food: rice, roti, curry chicken, curry shrimp, alloo pies, green salads, macaroni pie.
Joy needs help to get out of the car and up the steps; as soon as she reaches the patio, she grips the back of a chair, all the colour gone out of her face. ‘Sit, sit, sit,’ the women say, all the women who have taken over Clyde’s house. ‘Make her sit down.’ A plate of food is brought to her. Uncle Vishnu and Clyde eat too, their plates balanced on their knees. When the babies start to cry, the women mix up bottles of milk; others walk, bouncing and shushing. Joy looks for somewhere to put down her plate. Clyde takes it from her.
‘Don’t let her get up, make her sit,’ someone calls. ‘Bring her the babies,’ someone else says. ‘Look, she’s fretting. Bring them to her.’
The good baby takes its bottle, settles. The other one twists and lurches, its face turning purple. ‘Is that normal?’ Clyde asks. ‘Is it supposed to look like that?’ Milk spills out of the baby’s mouth, trickles down its cheek to the folds of its neck. It splutters, turns purple again. ‘That doesn’t look right,’ Clyde says.
Mousey turns to Uncle Vishnu. ‘Why you-all don’t go out for a drive or something?’ she says. ‘Take Clyde to get some fresh air.’
Uncle Vishnu, still chewing, puts down his plate, pats his pockets for his keys. ‘No problem!’ he says. ‘Eh, Clyde? Come. You and me will go out. The men.’
‘Yes, you men go out,’ Mousey says. ‘It’s better.’
‘Anywhere you want to go?’ Uncle Vishnu asks, when they get in his car and reverse out the drive.
‘Not really,’ Clyde says. He wants to stay in his house with his wife, and to show her the rooms that he painted, all the things that he has done.
‘Now is the time to give her some space,’ Uncle Vishnu says. He waves to the children playing outside the gas station. ‘Give her a little room. But don’t worry, things will come back like before. It will take a little time.’
‘Sure, sure,’ Clyde says. He lights a cigarette. He is glad of the fresh air and the breeze through the car window. He is glad to be away from the women and babies, and seeing Joy so silent and weak, and the strange twisting and lurching of the sick baby. This is why men end up in the rum shop, he thinks – in the rum shops and on street corners, playing cards and gambling and going with other women and fathering children all over Trinidad. He doesn’t exactly know what he’s going to do, what he is supposed to do, but he knows for sure that it isn’t that. When he has smoked the cigarette down, he mashes it into the ashtray and brushes the dust from his fingers. He looks at his hands, still covered with speckles of Baby Blue paint.
‘Boy, you know, I really have to ask you something,’ Clyde says to Uncle Vishnu, after a while. They are out of the valley, coming into town. ‘Why you driving this old mash-up car?’ The car is an old Nissan Bluebird with the rearview mirror cracked and taped over with Sellotape, the stuffing poking out through cracks in the vinyl seats.
Uncle Vishnu laughs; Clyde realises that he has been staying quiet all this time, waiting for Clyde to feel better. ‘Man, I don’t need those kind of things,’ Uncle Vishnu says. ‘What I need a fancy car for? So people will ooh and aah when they see me coming?’ He rests his elbow in the open car window, waving frequently to people he knows. ‘Man, they already glad to see me! You know how many people trying to get appointment with me and I’m all booked up? Sometimes, at the hospital, I’m still seeing patients at all kind of nine-ten o’clock at night.’
‘But that’s what I mean,’ Clyde says. ‘You could have a big house in Haleland Park or Federation Park or one or those places, instead of that little place you live in.’
‘Man, I don’t need any of that stuff,’ Uncle Vishnu says. ‘As long as I’m working? I’m happy. People say, Vishnu, why you don’t take a holiday? Go Miami, London, all those places? I say – what I want to take holiday for? Holiday from what? I love what I do. I don’t need holidays.’
In the parking lot for the grocery, a youngish man comes up to them, in a white t-shirt and flip-flops, and a baseball cap with ‘Yankees’ written on it in swirly writing. He leans in politely until Uncle Vishnu sees him. ‘Hi, doc,’ he says. He extends a hand to shake. ‘How you keeping?’
‘Good, thanks, good,’ Uncle Vishnu says. ‘How’s your mother?’
‘She’s very well,’ the man says, still shaking his hand. ‘She’s well, thanks, doc.’
Inside the grocery, by a stack of dusty yams, a woman taps Uncle Vishnu on the shoulder. She’s lightish-skinned, with grey hair, well dressed. ‘Dr Ramcharan? Hi! I thought it looked like you.’
As Uncle Vishnu talks, the woman’s eyes examine Clyde; Clyde tries to look respectable. ‘And who’s this you have with you?’ she asks, smiling at Clyde. ‘Not your son? I thought you had no children?’
‘My nephew,’ Uncle Vishnu says, and again Clyde shakes hands.
‘You’re not a Ramcharan,’ the woman says. ‘You don’t have the Ramcharan face. You must be an in-law?’
Uncle Vishnu explains that yes, Clyde is an in-law. ‘But same difference,’ he says. ‘It’s still family. In-law or out-law, no matter!’
The woman laughs. ‘I have something to bring for you,’ she says. ‘I’ll drop it next week. OK? I’ll put it in the carport for you if you’re not in.’
Uncle Vishnu inclines his head graciously. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t say no! Everything you bring always gets eaten, if not by me, then by somebody!’
They say their goodbyes and slowly push the trolley past the buckets of hot peppers and limes. Clyde runs his hand over a big watermelon, cool and smooth, the size of a pregnant woman’s belly. In the refrigerated aisle, Uncle Vishnu picks up a chicken, a few damp feathers pressing against the plastic. ‘Chicken,’ he says. He picks up another one, puts it in the trolley next to the first one. ‘Two chickens.’
Clyde follows, his hands in his pockets.
‘What about shrimp? You like shrimp?’ Uncle Vishnu asks, picking up a packet and inspecting it. ‘I’m paying, eh?’ he says, as he puts the shrimp in the trolley. ‘I will pay for all of this.’
‘Well, you get the meat, and I’ll get the rest,’ Clyde says.
‘No, no,’ Uncle Vishnu says. He’s walking slowly along the refrigerated aisle. He picks up a pack of chicken feet and puts it down. ‘You just had two babies, man. Let me give you a little treat, nuh.’
As well as the meat, Uncle Vishnu buys a sack of rice, six tins of Klim powdered milk, a jumbo pack of Crix crackers, Maggi stock cubes, cheese, eggs, macaroni, tomato ketchup, mustard, toilet paper, soap, shampoo, Squeezy, three cases of Carib, tinfoil, ice-cream cones and two tubs of Flavorite ice-cream, one vanilla, one rum ’n’ raisin. Vegetables are better at the San Juan market, he says; he’s not buying vegetables here. While he’s lining up at the tills, another patient comes up to him to say hello, an elderly man with two grown-up daughters and several grandchildren in flip-flops. One of the daughters talks to Uncle Vishnu about someone’s liver, while the man and the children look at Clyde and the full shopping trolley. Clyde puts out his hand to the old man. ‘Clyde Deyalsingh,’ he says. ‘Nephew-in-law.’
‘Hear nuh,’ Uncle Vishnu says, in the car, on the way home. ‘I was thinking. Mousey’s living with you such a long time now. Let me give you some money to pay for her food.’
‘If you want. But she doesn’t eat much,’ Clyde says.
‘I know. And she’s good, she works all the time. As long as she could stand up on her two feet, Mousey will work. Cook, clean, she will mind the children when Joy needs to rest.’
‘I don’t mind Mousey being with us at all. She helps Joy in the house. It doesn’t bother me.’
‘Let me leave some money for you anyway,’ Uncle Vishnu says. ‘I don’t want to be putting any burden on you, you understand.’
‘It’s no burden,’ Clyde says. ‘So far, we managing OK.’
‘What’s the problem?’ Uncle Vishnu says. ‘You don’t want to take money from me or something?’ He looks confused.
‘I’m not really in the habit of taking money from people,’ Clyde says, tentatively. ‘Borrowing, and things like that.’
‘It’s not borrowing. You don’t have to pay me anything back. I just want to give you something to cover Mousey’s expenses.’ They’re out of the town, on a fast stretch of road, but Uncle Vishnu glances towards Clyde every few seconds, waiting for him to reply. ‘Eh? What’s the problem?’
‘Well,’ Clyde says. He tries to speak lightly. ‘When people give you money, there’s usually strings attached!’
‘You’re right,’ Uncle Vishnu says. He nods several times, and Clyde feels relieved that he hasn’t taken offence. ‘You’re right to think twice before taking money from people. Very right. But I am not just people!’ He says ‘people’ in a jokey tone, with a kind of mock-disgust. ‘I am family with you, man! You are my family. There are no strings attached. I’m not going to come back in a year’s time and say, oh, hello, you must pay me back such-and-such amount that I lent you. I am not like that.’
Clyde murmurs, ‘Yea,’ as Uncle Vishnu talks. There’s nothing else he can say.
‘Look. I could see you’re not sure. You’re worried I’m trying to take over. I’m not. But you are my family, man. I don’t need all the money I earn! I prefer to give that money to my family, rather than buy things I don’t need.’
They’re coming back into the valley, where it’s green and quiet. Uncle Vishnu goes slowly down the hill, braking often on the curving, narrow road where the bush grows thickly on both sides. When the road straightens out, the bush thins and the valley opens up to a wide green expanse dotted with trees and buffalo and goats, and the bright yellow of the poui trees in bloom. Uncle Vishnu lets the car coast down the slope.
‘Let’s do like this,’ Uncle Vishnu says. ‘I’ll pay you a little bit to cover Mousey’s expenses. You have extra mouths to feed now. All of that is a burden on you. I have seen it time and time again. Trust me, I am right. You might not feel it yet, but it will become a burden.’
*
In the months that follow, Clyde sees that Uncle Vishnu was right: that the burden on him grows and grows. The babies need milk, toys, clothes; they need bottles, special cups, plastic plates. They need no-more-tears shampoo, they need a pram, they need cream for diaper rash. Joy starts buying Pampers, because the cloth diapers are too slow to wash and dry every time; if there is no water, she can’t wash them at all, and they just sit in a bucket stinking up the place. Joy’s brothers and their families come over every few weeks, and they stay until late in the evening, and eat and drink and drink and eat. If Clyde does the shopping on a Saturday, by Tuesday the food will be finished again. Uncle Vishnu gives him an envelope full of money which he says is for Mousey’s food, and then he gives him another envelope at Divali, at Christmas, at New Year. He starts bringing little extras with him when he comes over: a big sack of Purina dog chow, two dozen eggs. He goes in the back and washes out the dogs’ food bowls, hoses down the floor of the dog-house, pours some Clorox, scrubs with the broom. Clyde, sometimes, watches him from the back-step and says, a bit sheepishly, that he was going to do it, and just hasn’t got round to it yet, but Uncle Vishnu just waves a hand and says, ‘Don’t worry, man. I just doing a little bit to help out. You busy with your wife and children. Me, I have time, I could do it.’
