All about Skin (40 page)

For a moment, as if she knew someone was watching her, the woman turned slightly in the direction where Emanuel was kneeling. While he could not make out her entire face he saw the profile of her eyes, her nose, her full, dark lips. She was perfect, just perfect, Emanuel said to himself, struggling to his feet. He would keep that picture in his mind all day as he worked in the field.

From the beginning Urmilla was a quiet, hardworking woman who never asked much of Emanuel. In the evenings when he came home from the field his meals would be warm and waiting for him. He complimented himself on how wise he had been to get rid of Mavis, that Jezebel of a woman, always demanding that he help with chores around the yard when he stayed over at her house.
Do something!
that Mavis was forever saying. Urmilla, thank God, made no such demands and understood that when he came home from the field he was worn out and tired. Urmilla fetched the wood for herself, cooked the meals, planted all the thyme, escellion, and tomatoes she needed to season the meat with. The first two years of his marriage he remembered as bliss, and the only time he ever left the yard was reluctantly to go to the field. It got so bad that Robinson started teasing him that he never saw him anymore.

“Can't you give that poor woman a break?” Robinson would say whenever they ran into each other in the district. “Do you think you could find a little time to come play dominoes one Friday night like you used to do? Even I give Daisy a little break now and again!”

“You just don't understand,” Emanuel would say, smiling that knowing smile, “you just don't understand.”

“Oh, I understand alright!” Robinson would reply, laughing. “I understand only too well. I guess we should be expecting two little feet any day now?”

“Yes, any day now!” Emanuel would brag.

He could hardly wait for Urmilla to have a child. To have his child. Already he could see this child who would not look like any other child in the district, Urmilla's Indian blood running through its body. That child would be different, special; everyone would want to hold it. That child too would finally make him a big man in the district for then he would be a man who could make babies. Every month he watched for “signs” that Urmilla was carrying his baby.

But month after month no such sign came and after a while he became a little anxious.

“Milla” he said, coming close to her one night in the bed and calling her by the name he'd given her, trying his best to keep the anxiety out of his voice. “How long we been married now?”

Urmilla smiled without answering. They both knew the answer to that question. In a few weeks they would have been married a year and a half.

“Yes,” Emanuel said, laying his head on her lap, “a year and a half we've been married to each other.”

She was wearing the sheer-pink nightgown he'd bought her, the one that allowed him to see the brown nipples of her breasts. He reached up and started tugging at one of her nipples through the material before he again got serious. “Don't you think it should have happened already?” he asked, using his chin to point to her stomach. “Don't you think by now we should have had a baby?”

A sadness came over Urmilla and her body sagged. Doubt and confusion clouded her eyes. She looked at him but said nothing.

“Well, let's try again,” he said, pulling her down on top of him, trying to lighten the mood, trying to stave off both their worries. “If not this month, then next month surely!”

But it did not happen that month. Or the month after that. Or the month after that. In fact, it would never happen; and none of the doctors, bush doctors, or herbalists they consulted could ever tell them why this was happening, for both he and Urmilla were healthy young people. It was the bush doctor, confounded because the bushes he gave them weren't working, who told Emanuel that perhaps having children was not his calling in life. Perhaps he and his wife were just supposed to live together without the headache of children, the bush doctor said, for once you had them you realize what a lot of problem children could be. Or, said the bush doctor when he saw the look on Emanuel's face, perhaps there is a little one without mother or father or being ill-treated by somebody you two could take and raise as your own. So many children on the island needed parents to love them. Had Emanuel thought about that? Emanuel had stalked out of the man's little thatched-roof place behind his big main house. He was not going to take up somebody else's responsibility. He wanted his own children to give him his own problems.

When, after several years, it became clear it would never happen, that he and Urmilla would never have children, Emanuel pulled away from Urmilla and every year became more resentful.

That woman had made him the laughing stock of the entire district. That woman had caused even children to question his masculinity. He could barely hold his head up in the district anymore because of Urmilla. Not when Mavis had a whole brood of children and now even grandchildren running all over her yard and Robinson had what he took to telling everyone was his own “cricket team.” With each passing year Emanuel found more and more reasons to blame Urmilla for why she'd never gotten pregnant. Perhaps, he would wonder aloud, those spices Urmilla kept pounding in a mortar had something to do with why she hadn't conceived. He was sure the problem was with her and not with him. Perhaps she was doing “something” to herself, he would say aloud for her to hear him, perhaps she was putting “something” into herself, all those “leaves” some of the women in the district used to bring on their monthly “menses.”

But the truth of the matter was that Emanuel knew that what he was saying was at the very least doubtful. He knew Urmilla would never do anything to harm anybody. Alright, he chuckled to himself one night, maybe she might harm him because once or twice when what he was saying got to her, she did make after him with a dutch pot. But she would never harm a baby. There were all the times he watched as her eyes traveled feverishly over a swollen woman's body, or how eagerly she would reach for a newborn baby. The woman he knew, had lived with for years, would never do anything to harm an unborn child. No, Urmilla would never do that.

That evening, on his way home from the field Emanuel stopped by his friend Robinson to feel him out and see if he knew anything about the woman who now had her house in the bushes.

“Round Robin?” Robinson asked, after they settled down to a game of dominoes.

“Naw, naw,” Emanuel said, waving away the idea. “I don't want to play dominoes tonight.”

Robinson lit a cigarette and looked at his friend, who seemed to be thinking hard about something.

“Urmilla all right?” Robinson broached the subject tentatively. He knew how testy Emanuel got when anyone brought up his or Urmilla's health.

“Yes, yes.” Emanuel again waved him off impatiently. “Nothing at all wrong with her, she only there getting fatter and fatter every day.”

“She must be one contented woman,” Robinson remarked, blowing white circles into the air from his cigarette. “It take a level of contentment for a woman to get fat, you know.”

“She too big though!” Emanuel mumbled under his breath.

“There you go again giving that woman grief ! I want you to know that you the only man round these parts that feels that way. You the only man I know complain about having a woman with some flesh on her bones. What you want? A meager gal pickney? You know us Portland man, us Jamaican man, we like our women heavy.”

“I the only man
round-these-parts
who know anything good! I don't like anything too big and heavy unless it is money!” Emanuel replied, still impatient and miserable. He was thinking hard about the slender young woman he'd seen in the bushes. God, the last time he'd seen her, her skin had taken on the radiance of a big, yellow sunflower.

“In your mind, Mani!” Robinson was saying, “it's all in your mind. Urmilla is a good woman, a honest and decent woman. A churchgoing woman, for I stay here on my verandah and see her go to church every Sunday morning rain or shine. Nothing at all wrong with that woman!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Emanuel again waved his friend away.

“Yeah nothing.” Robinson looked closely at his friend. “What bothering you, Mani? What on your mind so tonight?”

Emanuel leaned back in his chair, unsure how to begin. He looked at his friend, trying to gauge exactly what he should tell him. “You hear any talk of anybody new moving into the district?” He could not meet his friend's eyes.

“Well,” Robinson said as he leaned over and put out his cigarette, “one of Mavis's granddaughters is home with her a bit …”

Emanuel shook his head, impatient. “No, no, not like that, somebody totally new … a woman.”

He knew Robinson was probably looking at him with questions in his eyes, but Emanuel kept his face averted, playing with something at his feet.

“No, I don't hear of any such thing. Why you asking?”

“Oh nothing, nothing.” Emanuel was still staring at whatever was at his feet.

“Oh nothing, my backside! You and I, we have known each other forever, so don't come telling me this ‘oh nothing!' foolishness!”

“There
is
a woman, Robinson, living near my field …”

“Living near your field, Mani? All the way over in
those
bushes?”

“Yes, all the way over in
those
bushes!” Emanuel snapped. He knew some of the men made fun of how far in the bushes he had his field. Said he'd bought his land so far out because he was too cheap to buy land nearer the road. It was like people were always talking about him behind his back, always questioning his manhood.

“Well then, no,” Robinson answered, “I hear no talk about some woman living near your place over in the bushes! Mind is not duppy you seeing you know, mind is not bubby susan or rivermuma. You know enough to know to be careful of strange young women you see in the bushes, especially if they very pretty!”

If Robinson had just seen her, Emanuel kept saying to himself as he walked home that night, if he had just seen her then he would know why she was filling up his mind so. And he knew she was a real live woman because of the sweat that ran down her back and how she would tremble. She was no bubby susan or rivermuma, she was a real live woman. Of that he was certain.

After a week of spying Emanuel decided he just couldn't take it anymore, he was going to talk to the woman whether she liked it or not. He was going to take her by the shoulder and turn her around to face him because it was just plain bad manners for her not to talk to him when she was the one who had moved onto “his” land. Plus he had to pass her house going to his field every day after all, and it was high time they got to know each other. Suppose she should need his help one day, he told himself to bolster what he was planning to do, suppose she should have some kind of emergency? Her talking to him was for her benefit. He did not care if she set the yellow-billed parrot on him, for he was prepared to fight the parrot off with his two bare hands.

Of course by the time he got to the breadfruit tree he could not find the house, but by now he was familiar with the games of the woman, the games of all women who loved to have men searching down the place for them. Yes, he said to himself, standing in the clearing and looking around, the house had to be around here somewhere. He took a deep breath, squinted his eyes the better to see, and began searching. If the thought occurred to him, somewhere in the far recesses of his mind, that this was not right, that the woman, the bird, and the house should not be able to appear and disappear at will, he just brushed the thought aside as one of the many games of women.

Emanuel searched and searched for hours on end, retracing his steps from the road to the breadfruit tree. Measuring the distance between the breadfruit tree and the flamboyant tree. The woman's small wooden house with shuttered jalousie windows had to be here somewhere. But no matter what he did, however many times he measured and remeasured his steps back and forth, he did could not find the house. Eventually, late in the afternoon, he found a path he believed led to the house and eagerly followed it. The path led him to a spot where there were only feathers: emerald-green and royal-blue feathers. Nothing else was to be found there—not the tiny wooden house with the shuttered jalousie windows, not the purple Joseph's coat flowers and bright-red ginger lilies. Not even the big Julie mango tree was to be found. As easily as the house, the woman, and the bird sprang up, they had all disappeared.

Emanuel sat down heavily on the ground. He felt defeated. For a long time he was thinking. He thought about Urmilla and all she'd done for him, all she'd put up with over the years. He thought about how every day she carefully prepared his meals, took care of his clothes, did everything she could to make him comfortable. Mornings she rose early just to make his breakfast, leaving her warm indentation in the bed to keep him company. She made the hot chocolate just the way he liked it, with fresh cow's milk and brown sugar. She always made his lunch. Sometimes, in the middle of the day, she would even dare the bushes by herself to bring him something she knew he liked, roast breadfruit and fried salt fish that she'd prepared for her own lunch, for example, because she knew how he loved salt fish especially if it was cooked with susumber. Those days she would sit and keep him company as he worked and then they would walk back to their house together. She had been a good woman to him. Emanuel had no choice but to admit that. Small as it was the house was always clean, and keeping a small house clean, his mother used to always say to him, was harder than keeping a large house clean, because so many things could get into all the tiny crevices and corners of a small house. He wasn't trying to say she was a saint, that Urmilla, for once or twice he had felt the full force of her anger. But she had stayed with him, stuck it out with him, and he knew, deep down, that he could always count on her.