This One Sky Day, page 4
‘Romanza, serious things. Come down.’
He tried to obey. After all, his twin was the only person in his family who still spoke to him and he was very fond of her. He sat up carefully, balanced in the tree’s fork, forty feet up. Arms like elastic bands. His knees felt mildewed. He coughed, grimacing at his sore throat. Pilar would have something to say about that, he could hear him now.
Mmm-hmm. Gallivanting the streets all night. Mind people hold you and give you more than a sore throat.
He smiled; despite Pilar’s dire warnings, he knew the man was proud of him.
Below him, Sonteine stamped.
‘Wait, Sonte. Gods.’ The words were impatient, but he wasn’t.
‘Your bumbo. I coming up to get you.’
She seemed to mean it, alright.
He had taught her how to climb, so he wasn’t concerned about her falling, although she did look remarkably oily this morning, if he could trust his eyes in the brightening light.
‘I don’t believe you making me climb and scratch up myself, especially right now!’
Up she came, smooth and steady, talking to him and the tree. He fought sleep. Sometimes he was tempted to tell his twin about his late-night trips into town. The audacity of his mission would delight her. But he also knew she’d talk it out the minute she left the bush – certainly to Dandu. He couldn’t have that.
Women liked to put their hands in his long black hair, pulling out the golden strands as gifts, thinking him young and harmless, telling him their business. Look how he eye dark, they said. Generally, men told stories to boast, but women were different. They wanted to look at their words in the air and extract the meaning, and if you shut up and listened, they’d tell you very interesting things indeed.
Nobody would take his messages seriously if they knew who and what he was. He grinned sleepily. Most of the fun was in the secrecy, and he certainly didn’t want the attention. Unlike some bastards, who just deserved it. Like Pony Brady.
Christopher ‘Pony’ Brady was councillor for the second district of Dukuyaie, and well known for his campaigns to protect young women from the sins of men. He’d once set his henchmen on a couple found kissing on the steps of Pastor Latibeaudearre’s church. Said she looked too young for such slackness. Broke the boy’s back and nobody complained when it came out later that the girl was a youthful-looking twenty-four years old and the boy’s family too poor to raise a fuss.
Romanza had long smelled something on Pony. The councillor was a liar, and violent, so he’d kept his ear out for the man’s business. Someone must know and eventually talk; last night, a woman with three arms did.
She told him in the corner of a dancehall, where black-kohled musicians played low every second day, on guitars that sobbed like women. She worked for Pony Brady, and she drank too much and mumbled so Romanza had to bend closer to hear her. Shhh, he crooned, as she fell asleep, arms stretched out across the table. She was lighter after she’d confided; people were better afterwards.
He knew she was telling him the truth, born as he was, knowing the difference between the truth and a lie.
He’d painted what she said across the courthouse and the town hall and oh, the streets and sides of houses, and on trees, everywhere, before he got tired, these brilliant orange ribbons.
PONY RAPES CHILDREN
Sonteine reached him, panting and shaking her head. She arranged herself on the sturdy branch opposite and tried to lie on her side like him, talking fast. He’d taught her better than that: you arranged yourself in the tree before you did anything else.
‘Zaza, you hear about the—’
‘Sonteine. Slow down.’
‘Oh.’
She wobbled slightly and closed one eye to concentrate. Dimples and shining skin and frizzy dark hair and nineteen years old and no cors at all. That shocked people, but he thought it made her something rare.
She took a deep breath, equilibrium regained. A cloud hovered next to her ankle.
‘You look tired,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘You hear what happening in Lukia?’
‘Is you wake me up.’
‘You know Christopher Brady?’
‘No.’ He told lies like everyone else, but he didn’t like to do it.
‘You know him, man.’
‘Do I?’
She scratched her oily shoulder. ‘Big-time politician. Papa have him at the house a few years back.’
‘Pony Brady. Mmm.’
‘He been raping a nine-year-old girl. Zaza. I feel sick.’
‘Yes.’
‘Papa said they taking him in. Is that graffiti boy paint it all across the place.’
‘Which graffiti boy?’
‘You know, he paint all kind of scandal. Is him mash up that thieving bakery down in Pluie that was selling puss meat in their patty. He giving Pap a warm time. That boy is in the middle of everything.’
‘How them know him not lying?’
‘Everything he put his mouth into seem to work out. Pap say he sending police chief to go haul up Brady. Two witness come forward, as well as the girl mother look like she find the courage to talk out, and it might be even more children, have mercy. Pap cussing, say he don’t have no time for this now, but I tell him he better see to it.’
Romanza nodded. ‘I hope he does, Sonte.’
He was not convinced by their father or the police; what he hoped was that someone else would take Pony into a private corner and beat him, pause to rest, then beat him some more.
‘Anyway,’ said Sonteine. ‘I break out the house to come spend an hour with my brother before madness take over today.’
He tweaked her nose. ‘Good.’
‘Before light this morning them old lady and Mamma come wake me up to oil me!’
He winced: she was lying somehow, and it made his sore throat worse. Most people lied: for shame, fear, expedience. He didn’t hold it against them, but Sonteine generally tried to avoid hurting him. It was probably a lie to soothe herself, then: a minimising. One of the worst kinds. He fixed his eyes on the cloud near her. He’d dreaded this whole conversation.
Her face fell. ‘You not coming to my wedding tomorrow, are you?’
He coughed so hard they both had to cling to the tree. Momentarily, he wished he was something else.
‘I didn’t plan to come, no.’
Sonteine pulled her ear. He wondered if their mother noticed she did it when she was confused or sad. He doubted it.
‘I guess Pap wouldn’t let you in,’ she sighed. ‘Not even Temple steps though, Zaza?’
He didn’t want her angry with their father the day before her wedding. Papa was a fool and a bigot, but he loved Sonteine. Some people learned best through love.
‘How you feeling?’ he asked. ‘Frock ready? You ready?’
‘Yes.’
He closed one eye at the acid shock in his jaw. ‘Ow. Sonte, man!’ He prodded her waist. ‘You think I could let a big rass lie like that pass? What happen to you?’
Her mouth turned down. ‘Nothing.’
‘Ooooow. Is what? You and Dandu fight?’ He liked Dandu. He would know what it meant when Sonteine pulled her earlobe.
She was silent, looking down.
‘I was joking. You and he really in disagreement?’
‘Noooo …’
The complicated lies made him dizzy. There was a problem between them, but perhaps Dandu didn’t know about it. He coughed.
‘You need to tell him if you have a worry.’
‘I know.’
‘Secrets can mash up love, Sonteine.’
She glared at him. ‘I know, I know! Stop looking at me like you know everything.’
‘I do know everything.’
‘Shut up.’
‘You come here in my owna tree, come tell me to shut up? Mind I fling you out.’
‘Your tree? Not you say tree don’t have no master?’
‘When I said that?’
‘All the time. Damn mad indigent!’
His mouth twitched.
‘Girl, you don’t even know.’
‘Mad poison eater.’
She would laugh like this when she married Dandu; he was quite certain of it.
‘You better listen to me,’ he teased. ‘Long time I have a man, you know.’
‘You think man-and-man business have something to do with woman?’
‘Of course. Tell me what happen. Dandu don’t like the frock?’
‘Romanza!’
‘The frock ugly? It make you look like a cake?’
‘Idiot boy!’ She laughed harder.
‘He look at another pretty girl?’
‘I kill him dead!’
‘Ahhh, that is it! He look at another giiiiirl …!’
‘You know is not that!’ She was crying with laughter.
‘The girl look better than you?’
‘I hope the poison kill you.’
‘Ow! Lie.’
‘I hope you drop out this tree one night.’
‘Sonte, that hurt like hell, you know!’
‘I hope you fall in love with a woman.’
‘Stop it!’
A lizard paused at the foot of the tree, looked up at the laughing siblings then trotted away to do lizard things.
*
When they were children, his father took him away from the women after weekly Temple, leaving a pouting Sonteine with their mother and the maids. Over to Uncle Leo, Pap’s best friend. They’d arrive at the rotund shack in the late afternoon. Leo usually saw them coming and called through the window.
Boy pickney, you want to see what Uncle Leo make today?
New toys, always! The acrid, warm smell of paint. Romanza would lie on his stomach in the single room, pushing boats under the chairs and between his father’s feet, Intiasar teasing and complaining of tickling, the men drinking hard rum, eating butterflies straight from the air, talking business schemes. Romanza raced out into the yard, pulling toy carts behind him, Uncle Leo urging him on. Leo was the best adult he’d ever met, with his bushy beard. He could tell Uncle Leo only lied when he absolutely had to, and usually to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. He was very gentle and listened to you quietly, not like most adults.
Faster, Zaza!
Popisho people don’t like things too fast, his father snapped. Sometimes he took too much butterfly.
Lord, Bertie, give that a rest.
Who the rass you think you talking to?
Romanza crawled back under the table and sat cross-legged with his hands on his jaw and his fingers in his ears. He didn’t like it when his father was mean. Uncle Leo said it was time for Bertie to take Zaza home, now, don’t he think?
What you know about child? his father jeered. I don’t see Dandu anywhere.
Bertie, man. He with his mother people. Best place for him. I can’t grow a boy alone.
On their way home, his father held his hand.
So which toy you like, special boy? You think I could sell them to the whole world?
Romanza looked up at him, still worried.
Smile for me, boy. You have the best smile, make Papa feel good.
Old-time proverb said: stones on the river bottom think the sun is wet. For years, he’d thought of his father like that. Not bad, just stuck in a river-stone space, unable to see the world any other way.
Until Pilar came.
*
The lizard came back to watch Romanza, lying with his head on Pilar’s chest. The morning sun played tricks with the leaves above them, casting golden spots and dappled stripes onto their skin, tearing through holes bitten into them by insects. Sunlight pretending to be rain, dripping off the branches. Pilar pointed his toe towards the lizard, and it bit him gently. Romanza watched him. His eyes were far away, as they often were; it was because he spent so much time with his ear to the earth. Sometimes you could wait half a day for Pilar to consider his words. His voice reminded Romanza of a crow, and his hair was glossy like the crow.
‘Something happening today,’ said Pilar.
Romanza curled a lock of Pilar’s hair around his finger and tapped his nose gently. Pilar’s eyebrows were like a bird, flying.
‘Something important. You going to have to be wise.’
‘Just me have to be wise, in the whole of Popisho?’ Romanza teased him. ‘That sound heavy.’
Pilar kissed him quiet.
‘You not telling me no more?’
‘I don’t know it.’
Like screaming, that was.
‘Pilar.’
‘Sorry, lie drop out. What I mean is I suspect things, and because is suspicion, I don’t want to tell you everything in my mind.’ He smiled. ‘I know I can’t stop you, beloved, walking the road and into people business. But remember what I said.’
Romanza kissed his forehead. ‘You never really said nothing at all.’
The lizard watched them from a sun patch.
4
Xavier got to his feet in the kitchen, shrugging off the imagined sound of Nya’s dead voice. The front doors of the restaurant banged open for the arrival of four young women, all led by Moue, laughing, squabbling and moving around the house in avid formation. The sounds of routine whisked away the haunting, and he was grateful.
He needed to tend to the things of life today: the creak of Io’s footsteps on the second floor with Chse; Moue’s sharp commands; the sound of singing as the women began scrubbing every item they could get their hands on, very hard, yet carefully.
His place had to shine, oh yes. He’d do it himself, if need be.
He liked to think of people rising from their beds, picking up fire fans to stir the hearth stones for bread. There were three town bakeries and you could even get ship-bought bread over in Dukuyaie – the high-hill snobs snapped up that rubbish – but most people still made their own in the morning. The rumble of grinders for maize and the slip-slap-clap of the dough, flattened and passed from hand to hand, by women like his grandmother and her mother before them, clap-trapping the dough, pausing to plait up their hair, so it was dusted in flour and young women looked old. He often got maize flour in his dreadlocks, like a woman, and so many disapproved. Only homeless, worthless men choose ’locks.
He tried to ignore it all: the worship and the disapproval and the expectations.
He slipped out of the kitchen and headed upstairs. The anthem and morning prayers and weather reports would be finished by now. He sat down in Nya’s hammock and snapped on the radio. It was probably time to listen to what they were saying about him.
‘Good morning, Popisho. I am Hah, daughter of Lus. Blessings on this new day! Gods waking up the sun! You ready for me?’
He’d overheard people in town talking about this woman running a radio show for the very first time, asking what the rass was the world coming to? He thoroughly approved of women doing what they wanted to do. Fire in her belly though, said the chatterers. She’d need that.
Hah sounded like she was smiling, not just pretending.
He moved restlessly, got out of the hammock.
‘All kinds of things going on, baba! Everybody excited about wedding tomorrow! So much freeness Governor Intiasar putting on, I can’t even count! Free food! Party and music! Presents for all the pickney-them! I never know a man so happy his daughter getting married! I hope Sonteine Intiasar gladdy-gladdy like her daddy!’
Xavier smiled. She was a dissenter, talking like a peasant on the radio. No speaky-spokey here, a rass.
‘The day before a woman wedding day is a good day to think, Sonteine Intiasar!’ Hah laughed wickedly. ‘You still got a whole day and night to consider if that man is the right kind of somebody for you. Don’t watch all the noise we making out here about your business! Man know what them getting when them married – a woman to run them house. Is woman who have to watch themself, ’sake pretty frock and wedding party cloud judgement. Ladies, I know you all understand me! How much of you wish you did think twice?’
Xavier decided he liked this woman very much indeed.
‘… while Sonteine thinking, everybody make sure you take advantage of Governor Intiasar and his largesse today, you hear me? I talking: eat hearty and drink deep.’
Except here it was, now.
‘And watch out for that macaenus. Imagine, that pretty-pretty man doing old-time walkround today! What you know about that, ladies? Coming to a neighbourhood near you!’
Xavier sighed. Maybe he didn’t like her that much.
There was a knock on his bedroom door.
Maybe he shouldn’t go and do any of it. Maybe today of all days, Nya would finally come.
‘You going know Xavier Redchoose when you see him. Strapting fellow, I hear.’ More merry laughter. ‘After Sonteine Intiasar done eat up her wedding feast I going to read out that menu right here, so all-you can know how to cook like macaenus.’
He snapped the radio off and stood, stroking the top of it. Glanced at Nya’s hammock.
More knocking, harder this time.
He murmured yes, then said it louder.
The door cracked open. Much giggling, then a small hand bent around the door, holding a piece of paper. It was swiftly followed by a long thin arm, whipping almost six feet across the room. The paper waggled.
‘Guess who, Uncle Xavier?’
She liked this trick. She’d started doing it after he told her running into his kitchen could be dangerous. Now she did it when she wanted to cheer him up.
‘Now who is that? With such a lovely brown arm?’
More giggling. She had company. Then in a breathless rush: ‘We can come? Olivianna mamma said she can eat breakfast here but first you have to wash her.’
‘Come, come.’ He’d done this washing before.
Chse entered, arm retracted and normal, followed by a dark girl with pink lungs slung on her hips like fleshy sacks.
‘They get dirty this morning,’ she said.
Xavier smiled. The child stared back, solemnly. One of the indigent people from the Dead Islands. You knew them by their scant, frayed clothing and steady gazing; most had lost their capacity to blink and live in houses. Theirs was a heavy consideration, as if a stone had decided to look at you, with all its knowledge of soil and sap and mineral and heat. He hadn’t seen this little one for weeks and she’d become thin in too short a time. Hollow chest, stripped collarbones. He frowned as she walked towards him. Her belly looked swollen.
