A Different Hurricane, page 10
You are in a tight spot, my dear Gordon. And I don’t know what advice to give you. I can’t help being selfish. I’m on night duty all of this week. I must see you. I’m in as much agony as you. At least we can commiserate together.
Still hoping that we can be each other’s forever,
Allan
Much help your letter is, he thought as he pushed it into the envelope and into a back pocket. He walked off the landing, into the yard, and followed the track leading from their house to the Riley road. Just as he got there, he met May returning from the lands at Carapan. On her head a bunch of plantains, in her right hand the rope of their prize stud ram, in her left a machete. Her dog Grover walking behind her, ensuring that the ram kept pace. May entered their gate, and Gordon turned left. For a brief moment he wished he could exchange his life for hers. He scaled the short hill that bordered their property, then descended to the river, skipped the stones, and began to ascend the hill toward Kelbourney, as steep, if not steeper, than the Riley hill.
Midway up the hill he heard, “Aay! Aay! Godson, you ain’t hear me call out to you? How you pass me so and don’ say howdy?” He looked back and saw Nennie Bradshaw standing at the gate leading to her house. It was the only house between the river and Kelbourney.
“Pardon, my manners, Nennie Bradshaw. I was carried away in my thoughts.”
“Boy, is woman you got on your brain, or what? You pass me standing here and didn’ even see me. I call out to you and you ain’t hear me. Gordon, don’ make woman send you to mental home, no.”
He chuckled and resumed walking.
Maureen would have been right for him if … She was easy to get along with. Independent. Intelligent. Attractive: five foot four; slim but not skeletal; round, firm buttocks. Fist-size breasts. Thick, sensuous lips. Café au lait complexion and long, semi-straight hair. He felt no erotic charge when they had sex and he knew why. Allan had about a dozen books on homosexuality and Gordon had read parts of them. He knew why when he and Maureen were having sex, he had to pretend he was with Allan. If he didn’t, he lost his erection. Even so, half the time he faked the orgasm, and when he didn’t, it was feeble and gave him none of that deep pleasure and emotional release he got when it was with Allan. It had taken quite a while for him to be comfortable with his homosexuality. The books he’d read on the subject and discussed with Allan had helped to free him from thinking that he was a sinful, filthy pervert.
Now he wished he had faked his orgasm every time. In a marriage like this until he died! He’d be better off in prison.
She wouldn’t abort. She might tell others that he’d asked her to. They’d spread the news, and in very little time he’d become a pariah. He knew he was trapped. Could he give the child to his mother? May might help too. No, not Lillian. West Indians were just beginning to learn that beating children wasn’t necessary, that it was, in fact, damaging. But Lillian called such information nonsense. “A good licking is the best way to straighten out own-way pickney. Talk to them! What you mean, talk to them? They will laugh in front o’ your face and behind your back. You have to cut their backside — good and proper.” She’d said this one day after listening to a debate on NBC Radio about corporal punishment. She said her mother had beaten her with everything except the kitchen sink, and she had turned out all right.
“Because of it?” he’d asked her and was astounded when she nodded yes. Her views had altered some since, but he still doubted she’d be a good mother.
Nor would he want any child of his to receive the religious indoctrination he and Allan had been subjected to. When Allan returned from Jamaica, he told Gordon that he no longer believed in God. It took Allan a while to convince him. It happened after Gordon had read Civilization and Its Discontents; Why I Am Not a Christian; Black Skin, White Masks; The Fire Next Time … and he, too, came to believe that religion was the opiate of the masses, and that there was a lot that was unholy in the content and history of the Bible.
Lillian asked him why he no longer went to church. He told her, “I no longer believe that stuff.”
She froze where she stood in the living room. It took her several seconds before she said, “I didn’ hear right. Lemme ask you that question a second time: Gordon, why you stop going to church?”
“You heard me correctly the first time.”
She lifted her head to the ceiling. “Lord, what is this world coming to? We must be in the last days in truth.” She shook her head frantically. “Boy, God will cut you down! This is blasphemy! Where you get these ideas from?”
“From educated people.”
“Educated people! What sort of education can make you turn your back on God? Boy, ‘The fool says in his heart there is no God.’ This ain’t how I raise you.”
He began walking toward the door.
“Gordon, where you going? I ain’t finish talking to you.”
“I have finished listening to you.” He left.
She didn’t speak to him for a week, not even to return his greetings. Eventually May asked him about it. He repeated their conversation verbatim. She twisted her lips to the left, then to the right, and gave a long series of whaddya-know nods before saying, “Every day I find out more and more about the education I miss out on. But if it make you stop believing in God, I better off without it.”
The sound of a car coming up the Gomea road made him aware that the Kelbourney road had ended, that he was in Gomea. Beyond Arnos Vale, a mere sliver of orange sun showed just above the sea’s horizon. He hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight. He turned to walk back home to avoid the dense darkness of the Kelbourney road, bordered by a cliff with dense overhanging trees. It had spawned many stories of ghosts, diablesses, soucouyants, and jacklanterns that Ben had enjoyed telling them, even making himself a character in them, sometimes forgetting the stories were about places in St Vincent and not Barbados. Gordon’s fear, however, was twisting his ankles in the road’s ruts.
It was dark when he re-entered the path to their yard, the tall nutmeg trees on both sides making the darkness denser. From the gate, some thirty yards from the house, he saw that the yard light and the living room lights were on. About ten feet from the door, he heard several voices, one of which was Maggie’s.
“Men are hound dogs.”
May chuckled.
“Some men,” Lillian said, “not all.”
May chuckled again.
“Mother, we have to be going,” Maureen said. “Cousin Bernie is on the flat waiting for us.”
“I going talk to that ornery son of mine,” Lillian said. “Telling you to throw away your child. What this world coming to? Believe me, I didn’ raise him to think that way. Maureen, I will talk to him. He can’t just breed you and drop you. It ain’t right. I won’t stand for it.”
At that point, Grover ran out onto the landing and began wagging his tail.
“I think he come,” May said.
“Gordon, you arrive just in time,” Lillian called out to him.
He entered the house.
“Bring one o’ the dining chairs to sit on,” Lillian said. Maureen and Maggie were sitting on the two Morris armchairs. May and Lillian were sitting on the settee that used to be Gordon’s bed before the house was enlarged.
He placed the chair as far away from them as politeness allowed and sat down.
“Gordon,” Lillian said, “Maureen tell me that she in the family way, and you is the father, and you tell she to throw away the child. I is right so far?”
“Go on,” he said.
“Throw away the child! Gordon, you can’t mean that?”
He said nothing. It was pointless to argue with her. He’d heard enough stories about women whose wombs were said to be graveyards. Whited sepulchres, they were called. Invariably they were destined for hell and were sure to call lists (recount horrible crimes) on their deathbeds. He knew he was outnumbered. Not even May would be on his side. Once, when he was around sixteen, she’d told him that she felt he and Allan were bulling and they’d better not let people catch them and hang them, meaning that the villagers would make effigies of them, put the effigies on trial, pronounce them guilty, and burn them. He’d taken her comment as an outburst of the sibling rivalry she usually managed to hide.
“You not saying anything in your own defence?” Lillian continued.
He shook his head.
“Well, I have a lot to say. We is from a decent God-fearing family. You hear? Decent. My parents been poor, but we is decent, and I think I and your father — may his soul rest in peace — raise you to be decent too. You don’ have the right to ruin the reputation o’ my family and ruin Maureen life.”
He wanted to say, Decent! My father decent! Is that why he died from a stroke in Vera’s house?
“With everyone here as my witness, I saying to you, Gordon, you going to do the right thing and marry Maureen and treat her with respect and dignity. Gordon, I expect you to obey me, ’cause is out of this womb that you come …” She tapped her stomach. “Maureen, how long the two o’ you been together?”
“Eight years. We started dating before I went to study in Barbados.”
The truth was that Maureen had invested in keeping the affair going, and she hadn’t given him a reason to break it off.
“All-you love affair last through that, and now Gordon, after you get the best o’ her, you want to toss her on the rubbish heap? No. No. Not as long I have breath in my body.”
He felt like saying, Ma, you intend to get a potion from the Obeah man for me? Because otherwise, I have no intention — none whatsoever — of becoming bogged down in marriage.
At that moment a car horn tooted out on Riley Flat.
“That must be Bernie,” Maureen said. She got up. Maggie did too. Lillian took the flashlight off a shelf in the dining room, and she and May accompanied them out to Riley Flat.
Gordon was distraught. He needed Allan’s arms around him, but there was no way for him to get into town at that hour. If he didn’t have to go to work the next day, he would have walked. He heard May’s and Lillian’s footsteps coming toward the house. He went into his bedroom and closed the door. If they spoke to him, he would not answer. He’d go brush his teeth when he was sure they were in bed.
He heard them enter and pull the door shut.
“Gord, your supper in the oven,” May said. “Boy, you can’t go to bed on a’ empty stomach. Gas going full you up.”
Should he answer? He decided not to.
The next morning, he left with a small suitcase of clothes early enough to catch the first bus to town, and headed straight to Allan’s apartment. Allan wasn’t in. He was probably making his rounds at the hospital.
He stayed with Allan for eight days. On the afternoon of the ninth, he left work an hour early and got to Riley around four, early enough to catch the last minibus back to town if Lillian began pestering him about Maureen. Lillian wasn’t home. May told him she was in La Croix attending a funeral.
For the two or so hours before Lillian returned, he and May said nothing to each other. He stayed in his bedroom. When Lillian returned, he heard May telling her that he was in his bedroom. Instantly Lillian began to sing. “Can a woman’s tender care / Cease toward the child she bear? / Mine is an unchanging love / Higher than the heights above / Deeper than the deepest sea …” Mama. He laughed to himself. She knew how to get to him.
Around six thirty, May called him for his supper. Lillian was at the dining table. He did not speak to her.
She cleared her throat.
He cleared his.
May chuckled once, then chuckled again. “The two of you like overgrown children. Mama, why you don’ just tell Gordon what on your mind?”
He took a deep breath. “Yes, Mama, tell me what you have to tell me. Of course, if you putting me out, I can’t leave before tomorrow morning. The buses have stopped running.”
“Leave! Like is leave, you want to leave. I ever say anything ’bout leaving? What I say ten days ago, and I saying it again, is, I expect you to do the honourable thing and make Maureen your wife. You is twenty-nine years old, Maureen is thirty. I is fifty-five. Is time for me to have grandchildren.” She looked at May.
“Don’ look at me. I can’t have them by meself.”
“Well, you turn down every man that want you.”
“Them is your kind o’ man, Mama. Like Daddy. I will drown myself before I marry a man like Daddy.”
“You dare say that to me! You dare talk about your father like that to me!”
May steupsed and waved her hand dismissively. “Stop, Mama, ’cause if you don’t, Gordon ain’t the only one who going leave this house.”
“May, I not studying you. Not studying you at all.” She turned her focus onto Gordon. “Young man, I expect you to marry Maureen.”
“Mama, you think that is a good thing, if Gordon don’ want to marry her. They going be living like snake and mongoose.”
“Not while I alive.”
May gave a loud cackling laugh. “You did promise to restore Gordon faith in God …”
“You stay out o’ this conversation. You hear me? You stay out. I talking with my son, not you.”
“My son. That’s not what you been calling him. Sweet-talk him now. As they say, you can’t catch flies with vinegar.”
She shot May a scorching stare.
“You think that is right, Gordon? To bring disgrace on this girl? She teaching high school. The students going lose respect for she. Put yourself in her place, Gordon. You would like a man to do the same thing to May?”
“Mama, leave me out o’ this. I can take care o’ myself. You talking like if Maureen is some innocent thirteen-year-old child. She thirty years old. She don’t know if you have sex and don’t protect yourself, you going get pregnant? Why you blaming Gordon? Blame her.”
He decided to rile Lillian. “I was thinking, since she doesn’t want to have an abortion, that you and May could raise the child.”
“I ain’t raising nobody child. Get that outta your mind. You enjoyed the food, now deal with the heartburn,” May said.
“I will help to raise my grandchild, yes — if you marry the mother.”
“If I don’t marry her, it will still be your grandchild.”
“I don’t want no bastard grandpickney. Do I make myself clear, Gordon?”
“But your father had Hortense. And Dad had Albert before he married you.”
“I not responsible for what my father do?”
“And you are not responsible for what I do or don’t do.”
They fell silent. No one gave ground. Dusk had fallen. May got up, turned on the lights, and went to sit in the living room.
He raised the towel and the plate covering the food May had served him — a large fried jackfish and slices of roast breadfruit and fried plantain. There was a cup of cocoa beside it. But he’d lost his appetite. He put the cover back on the food. “I’ll eat it later.”
He went into his bedroom and sat down on the hard-backed chair there. Lillian’s words came back to him: Put yourself in her place, Gordon. You would want a man to do the same thing to May? He could not deny the fundamental decency in them. May was a lot more crass: You enjoyed the food, now deal with the heartburn. But Maureen had done this to force his hand, and he felt like punishing her. But what about the child? What about the child?
Chapter 10
The phone is ringing inside. Gordon hurries in to answer it. The screen tells him it’s May. She tells him again that they have a meeting with the lawyer on September 13, next Wednesday. They have to transfer their share of their parents’ estate into their names. She is making her will as well. She’d reminded him about it two days ago when she came to give his house a deep cleaning. Valencia cleans it once a week. Sort of. She ignores pretty well everything the mop and vacuum won’t do.
He returns to sit on the patio. May now lives in a brand-new cement house, in a village now totally transformed from when he was growing up there. It bothers him that she lives alone with two dogs. The house is far back from the road and the nearest neighbour some three hundred yards away. Nowadays St Vincent ranks among the top twenty of the world’s most violent countries. Some years ago, when the husband-and-wife supermarket owners were robbed and almost killed at the juncture of the Evesham and Riley roads, he became worried for her safety. Now that the road is paved from Gomea to La Croix, it’s easy for the criminals to do their dirty work and get away quickly. May says that robbers go after people like him, people who live in Indian Bay and Cane Garden. She’s probably right about that. But there’s rape too. So bad that three years ago an article in the Toronto Star stated that St Vincent and the Grenadines had the “third-highest rate of recorded rapes after the Bahamas and Swaziland.” Riled-up politicians said SVG should stop releasing such statistics, that outsiders were using them to make St Vincent look bad.
He has urged her to sell the Carapan land. He doesn’t feel attached to it. It reminds him of sore back muscles — from hours bent weeding — and tired legs — from all those afternoons he toted ground provisions and boxes of bananas and plantains over to Evesham. Initially, his parents had leased Carapan. But Lillian was able to feed and clothe the family with the produce from it while Ben worked at Mount Bentinck. When Carapan estate offered to sell it to them, she had saved enough of her husband’s wages to cover most of the cost. For the rest she took out a mortgage on the Riley homestead. “Is because o’ Mama sweat that we own Carapan. They sacrifice my schooling to pay for it. Mama ghost going haunt me if I sell it,” May replies whenever he raises the subject. She should take a look at all the land in La Croix and Evesham Vale that’s returning to forest because their owners are dead or have emigrated.
Ben had been one of half a dozen mechanics who’d come from Barbados to work at the Mt Bentinck sugar factory. He worked on the night shift and stayed out in Georgetown during the week and came back to Riley on weekends. One night in 1956, when one of the grinding wheels malfunctioned, Ben couldn’t be found. He lost his job then. After his death, Lillian told Gordon and May that it wasn’t the first time he’d left his post to spend time with his mistresses. From 1956, the land was all they lived off. At the time there was a thriving market for bananas and it was mostly what they cultivated.
