What Strange Stars and Skies, page 13
Sometimes at night, when the fog makes the slates of the sidewalk wet and glistening, or even when the cold wind blows up and clears the sky and shows the burning white stars, at such times the place isn’t a town, it’s a city—though a small one—it’s a port city, and the air smells of distant places.
MISS BUTTERMOUTH
NO, NO COFFEE. I mean it. I give it up for the time being. Say, you see this piece in the paper here, doodling and scribbles reveal the unconscious mind? It all ties in with the no coffee. I mean it. Call it a hunch.
What happen? I’ll tell you what happen. Couple months ago I was broke, like usual, and I was waiting for a money-order from my brother. The only thing that come was a couple of pamphlets from someone I never heard of. So to kill the morning I go to the library. You ever see a magazine called the Illustrated London Weekly? It’s mad, I just read it for chuckles. This time they had a big spread called “Interesting Discoveries In A North Syrian Tomb,” or some hot-blooded title like that. All about some bigshot named Ebed-Haddad, which they plant him, with a two-wheel Cadillac and a couple of hay-burners along. So I thought I’ll tell Haddad down at the lunch-room about it—family news from the Old Country, Haddad, from the land of the Sherbert and the shishkabob. But I forget to.
Next day, still no money. I got beans, I got bacon, but no coffee. Then noises coming through the wall give me notice that my neighbor, former Associate Professor Dudley Washburne, was at home, so I start to go and join him in a cup of his coffee. I bring along the pamphlets since I can’t make no sense out of them and maybe he can. You ever hear of a outfit called the Mother Honeywell Foundation of Supernal Light? Don’t laugh, it’s what I mean serious.
So I take the whole works to the Prof. I tell him, Prof, the good neighbor policy demands you give me a cup of coffee. He says, I never touch the filthy stuff; it rots the striated tissue of the kidney and debilitates the gonads.
Sure. That’s the way them professors talk. When he was at the University there was all this gizmadoo about swearing oaths, not swearing oaths, and a lot of people figured that was why he lost his job, But the simple truth is he just cannot resist breaking the tax stamps on liquor bottles, and once he gets them open, well . . . As for not swearing oaths, you should hear him some night when hes falling over the furniture. But he’s all right, though, the Prof.
He poured me out a cup. Brother. After the second one I give him the letter the pamphlets come in and the pamphlets too, and I ask him: See what you can make out of this, Professor. Well, he moans and says, Have mercy on him at that hour of the morning, and so on. Then he looks up and says, Surely, no one can really be named Miss Buttermouth? Anyone with a handwriting like this, he says, could give a course in cryptography.
I tell him to give a look at the pamphlets. What does this here Etaoin Shrudlu mean, I ask him. He says, I can’t tell you till you take the higher degrees, he says. It would be a violation of my fraternal oath, he says. Then he says: Hello, Hel-lo, What’s this? This is pure Ugaritic, he says.
That clicked. That was the name in the limey magazine about this Syrian tomb. I ask him what gives, and he points to this line in the pamphlet right after Etaoin Shrdlu. This I can’t pronounce. I got to write it out for you. Like this here: Tilt sswm mrkhht . . . I tell you, it’s nothing to laugh. Listen.
After the Prof finishes shaking his head and pulling his lip and rubbing the back of his head, he tells me something about this Ugaritic. How it’s one of them dead languages in the ancient east and they only started digging it up not long ago and very few people know it. Only—he says—this particular line don’t fit into the pamphlet at all. What? Of course I ask him what does it mean. He says it means a three horse chariot. Or maybe even Three horses, one chariot
Sounds like part of an inventory from a puny form tablet, he says. But whats it doing with the Mother Honeywell malarkey?
Well, like I say, none of this Mother Honeywell Supernal Light Foundation stuff makes any sense, so after I sop up some more coffee I make a polite farewell and took off for Louie’s. Where I borrow a scratch sheet and there it is.
The third race. Three horses.
Country’s Flag, number one. Abalsom, number two. Chariot, number three.
Three horses, one is Chariot! Almost I go wild. Then—very calm—I ask Louis how much of a bet can I put on the cuff. He don’t say, This much and he don’t say, That much. He just looks at me like I’m crazy and he says, It’s Wednesday. Yeah, yeah, I should of remembered Louis don’t give no credit on Wednesday, it’s his unlucky day. So I sound out everybody else and I tell you I never saw such a bunch of dead wood in my life. I even ran next door to Haddad in the lunch-room and I tell him, Let me take ten: I got a horse with a Syrian name.
He says, What name? He says, Chariot? You call that a Syrian name? You trying to kid me? So I start to tell him all about this Ugaritic stuff, but it was absolutely nothing doing. He act as if I’m trying to insult him and he just keeps on saying, All us peoples are Christian peoples. And by the time I get him cooled off I look at the clock and I see it s too late to place a bet.
I go back to Louie’s and I ask, Who won in the third? Chariot win in the third, they tell me . . . Naa. Don’t ask me what he paid. I’d break into tears if I tell you.
So I go home and I grab them pamphlets and what I mean, I read them. It says where they have what they call an illumination every night in the Mother Honeywell Auditorium, so that’s where I go and I make it my business to find out who sent me them pamphlets. Who is Miss Buttermouth, I ask. They show me. Who is it but this gray-hair old biddy with a mouth like a rabbit-trap. Her name is really Miss Buttermouth, but I always think of her the other way.
She just copies names out of the phone book—and get this: She writes them pamphlets herself!
I tell her what a deep impression they make on me and I walk her home and we stay up half the night talking about the Supernal Light. I get hold of the pamphlet with the—yeah, that one. And I ask her about the, about what I write down for you, you know? She says, Depend on it, it must have a deep and mystical significance, but she can’t explain it; when she writes it is just like she’s in a trance. All kinds of emanations from the spirit world take control she says. And for some reason the printer claims her handwriting is hard to make out, she says. Then I kind of slide the conversation to see if she knows anything about this Ugaritic, but all she says is, Mother Honeywell has freed us from the dead hand of the past.
So there it is. Like I say, I’m just playing a hunch. I bring her boxes of vegetable nut loaf and jars of yogurt and every night we go for Illumination at the Auditorium. I practically memorize the damn scratch sheet every day fust in case she should let drop a name of a hone. But you know what she’s starting to talk lately? Marriage! She don’t believe in passion, though, because it dissipates the vital energies, she says.
Meanwhile I dasn’t eat no flesh or onions or use strong drink, tobacco or coffee. That’s what she says, Or coffee. All of them things dissipates the vital energies, she says. Sooner or later my hunch will pay off and I’ll clean up, I tell you, I’ll clean up.
But I don’t know how long I can hold out I just don’t know.
WHERE DO YOU LIVE, QUEEN ESTHER?
COLD, COLD, it was, in the room where she lodged, so far from her work. The young people complained of the winter, and those born to the country—icy cold, it was, to them. So how could a foreign woman bear it, and not a young one? She had tried to find another job not so far (none were near). Oh, my, but a woman your age shouldn’t he working, the ladies said. No, no, I couldn’t, really. Kindly indeed. Thank you, mistress.
There was said to be hot water sometimes in the communal bathroom down the hall—the water in the tap in her room was so cold it burned like fire: so strange: hot/cold—but it was always too late when she arrived back from work. Whither she was bound now. Bound indeed.
A long wait on the bare street comer for the bus. Icy winds and no doorway, even, to shelter from the winds. In the buses—for there were two, and another wait for the second—if not warm, then not so cold. And at the end, a walk for many blocks. The mistress not up yet. Mistress . . . Queen Esther thought about Mrs. Raidy, the woman of the house. At first her was startled by the word—to she it mean, a woman live with a man and no marriage lines. But then her grew to like it, Mrs. Raidy did. Like to hear, too, mention of the Master and the young Master, his brother.
Both of they at table. “That second bus,” Queen Esther said, unwrapping her head. “He late again. Me think, just to fret, I.”
“Oh, a few minutes don’t matter. Don’t worry about it,” the master, Mr. Raidy, said. He never called the maid by name, nor did the mistress, but the boy—
As now, looking up with a white line of milk along his upper lip, he smiled and asked. “Where do you live, Queen Esther?” It was a game they played often. His brother—quick glance at the clock, checking his watch, head half turned to pick up sounds from upstairs, said that he wasn’t to bother “her” with his silly question. A pout came over the boy’s face, but yielded to her quick reply.
“Me live in the Carver Rooms on Fig Street, near Burr.”
His smile broadened. “Fig! That’s a funny name for a street . . . But where do you live at home, Queen Esther? I know: Spahnish Mahn. And what you rail a fig we rail a bah-nah-nah. See, Freddy? I know.”
The older one got up. “Be a goodboynow,” he said, and vanished for the day.
The boy winked at her. “Queen Esther from Spanish Man, Santa Marianne, Bee-Double-You-Eye. But I really think it should be Spanish Main, Queen Esther.” He put his head seriously to one side. “That’s what they used to rail the Caribbean Sea, you know.”
And he fixed with his brooding, ugly little face her retreating back as she went down to the cellar to hang her coat and change her shoes.
“The sea surround we on three sides at Spanish Man,” she said, returning.
“You should say, ‘surrounds us,’ Queen Esther . . . You have a very funny accent, and you aren’t very pretty.”
Looking up from her preparations for the second breakfast, she smiled. “True for you, me lad.”
“But then, neither am I. I look like my father. I’m his brother, not hers, you know. Do you go swimming much when you live at home, Queen Esther?”
She put up a fresh pot of coffee to drip and plugged in the toaster and set some butter to brown as she beat the eggs; and she told him of how they swim at Spanish Man on Santa Marianna, surrounded on three sides by the sea. It was the least of the Lesser Antilles . . . She lived only part of her life in the land she worked in, the rest of the time—in fact, often at the same time—she heard, in the silence and cold of the mainland days and nights, the white surf beating on the white sands and the scuttling of the crabs beneath the breadfruit trees.
“I thought I would come down before you carried that heavy tray all the way upstairs,” said the mistress, rubbing her troubled puffy eyes. Her name was Mrs. Eleanor Raidy—she was the master’s wife—and her hair was teased up in curlers. She sat down with a grunt, sipped coffee, sighed. “What would I ever do without you?”
She surveyed the breakfast-in-progress. “I hope I’ll be able to eat. And to retain. Some mornings . . she said darkly. Her eyes made the rounds once more. “There’s no pineapple, I suppose?” she asked faintly. “Grated, with just a little powdered sugar? Don’t go to any extra trouble,” she added, as Queen Esther opened the icebox. “Rodney. Rodney? Why do I have to shout and—”
“Yes, El. What?”
“In that tone of voice? If it were for my pleasure, I’d say, Nothing. But I see your brother doesn’t care if you eat or not. Half a bowl of—”
“I’m finished.”
“You are not finished. Finish now.”
“I’ll be late, El. They’re waiting for me.”
“Then they’ll wait. Rush out of here with an empty stomach and then fill up on some rubbish? No. Finish the cereal.”
“But it’s cold”
“Who let it get cold? I’m not too sure at all I ought to let you go. This Harvey is older than you and he pals around with girls older than he is. Or maybe they just fix themselves up to look—eat. Did you hear what I say? Eat. Most disgusting sight I ever saw, lipstick, and the clothes? Don’t let me catch you near them. They’ll probably be rotten with disease in a few years.” Silently, Queen Esther grated pineapple. “I don’t like the idea of your going down to the Museum without adult supervision. Who knows what can happen? Last week a boy your age was crushed to death by a truck. Did you have a—look at me, young man, when I’m talking to you—did you have a movement?”
“Yes”
“Ugh. If looks could kill. I don’t believe you. Go upstairs and—RodNEY!”
But Rodney had burst into tears and threw down his spoon and rushed from the room. Even as Mrs. Raidy, her mouth open with Shock, tried to catch the maid’s eye, he slammed the door behind him and ran down the front steps.
The morning was proceeding as usual.
“And his brother leaves it all to me,” Mrs. Raidy said, pursuing a piece of pineapple with her tongue. She breathed heavily. “I have you to thank, in part, I may as well say since we are on the subject, for the fact that he wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. I warned you. Didn’t I warn you?”
Queen Esther demurred, said she had never spoken of it to the young master since that one time of the warning.
“One time was enough. What was that word? That name? From the superstitious story you were telling him when I interrupted. Guppy?”
“Duppy, mistress.” It was simply a tale from the old slave days, Queen Esther reflected. A cruel Creole lady who went to the fields one night to meet she lover, and met a duppy instead. The slaves all heard, but were affrighted to go out; and to this day the pile of stones near Petty Morne is called The Grave of Mistress-Serve-She-Well. Mistress Raidy had suddenly appeared at the door, as Queen Esther finished the tale, startling Master Rodney.
“Why do you tell the child such stories?” she had demanded, very angry. “See, he’s scared to death.”
“You scared me, El, sneaking up like that.”
Queen Esther hastened to try to distract them.
“ ‘Tis only a fancy of the old people. Me never fear no duppy—”
But she was not allowed to finish. The angry words scalded her. And she knew it was the end of any likelihood (never great) that she might be allowed to move her things into the little attic room, and save the hours of journeying through the cutting, searing cold.
Said the mistress, now, “Even the sound of it is stupid . . . He didn’t eat much breakfast.” She glanced casually out the window at the frost-white ground. “You noticed that, I suppose.”
Over the sound of the running water Queen Esther said, Yes. She added detergent to the water. He never did eat much breakfast—but she didn’t say this out.
“No idea why, I suppose? No? Nobody’s been feeding him anything—that you know of? No spicy West Indian messes, no chicken and rice with bay leaves? Yes, yes, I know, not since that one time. All right. A word to the wise is sufficient.” Mrs. Raidy arose. A grimace passed over her face.
“Another day. And everything is left to me. Every single thing . . . Don’t take all morning with those few dishes.” Chicken and rice, with bay leaves and peppercorns. Queen Esther, thinking about it now, relished the thought Savory, yes. Old woman in the next yard at home in Spanish Man, her cook it in an iron caldron. Cran’dame Hephsibah, who had been born a slave and still said “wittles” and “vhiskey” . . . Very sage woman. But, now, what was wrong with chicken and rice? The boy made a good meal of it, too, before he sister-in-law had come back, unexpected and early. Then shouts and tears and then a dash to the bathroom. “You’ve made him sick with your nasty rubbish!” But, for true, it wasn’t so.
Queen Esther was preparing to vacuum the rug on the second floor when the mistress appeared at the door of the room. She dabbed at her eyes. “You know, I’m not a religious person,” she observed, “but I was just thinking: It’s a blessing the Good Lord didn’t see fit to give me a child. You know why? Because I would’ve thrown away my life on it just as I’m throwing it away on my father-in-law’s child. Can you imagine such a thing? A man fifty-two years old, a widower, suddenly gets it into his head to take a wife half his age—” She rattled away, winding up, “And so now they’re both dead, and who has to put up with the results of his being a nasty old goat? No . . . Look. See what your fine young gentleman had hidden under the cushion of his bedroom chair.”
And she rifled the pages of a magazine. Queen Esther suppressed a smile. It was only natural, she wanted to say. Young gentlemen liked young ladies. Even up in this cold and frozen land—true, the boy was young. That’s why it was natural he only looked—and only at pictures.
“Oh, there’s very little gets past me, I can assure you. Wait. When he gets back. Museum trips. Dirty pictures. Friends from who knows where. No more!”
Queen Esther finished the hall rugs, dusted, started to go in to vacuum the guest room. Mrs. Raidy, she half observed in the mirror, was going downstairs. Just as the mistress passed out of sight, she threw a glance upward. Queen Esther only barely caught it. She frowned. A moment later a faint jar shook the boards beneath her feet. The cellar door. Bad on its hinges. Queen Esther started the vacuum cleaner; a sudden-thought made her straighten up, reach for the switch. For a moment she stood without moving. Then she propped the cleaner, still buzzing, in a comer, and flitted down the steps.
There was, off the kitchen, a large broom closet, with a crack in the wall. Queen Esther peered through the crack. Diagonally below in the cellar was an old victrola and on it the maid had draped her coat and overcoat and scarf; next to it were street shoes, not much less broken than the ones she wore around the house.
Mistress Raidy stood next to the gramophone, her head lifted, listening. The hum of the vacuum cleaner filtered through the house. With a quick nod of her head, tight-lipped in concentration, the mistress began going through the pockets of the worn garments. With little grunts of pleasurable vexation she pulled out a half-pint bottle of fortified wine, some pieces of cassava cake. “That’s all we need. A drunken maid. Mice. Roaches. Oh, yes.” A smudged hektographed postal card announcing the Grand Annual Festivity of the St. Kitts and Nevis Wesleyan Benevolent Union, a tattered copy of Lucky Tiger Dream Book, a worn envelope
