If I Never Went Home (18 page)

‘You think I would put myself through all this trouble to bring you up if I did know who you father was? Man, I would have sent you to live by he long time now.’

She began rocking harder. ‘No, child. Your mother take that name to she grave. But your father couldn’t have been a decent body. Why else it so secret that her own mother never find out his name?’

Okay. I don’t know why I expected anything different from the old witch. I hope she dead soon. The only other person in the world left who might have that secret locked away is Aunty Indra. I doubt she will want to help me, but is not like I have a choice. When she came to drop a bag of oranges for Nanny I walked her out to the front gate.

‘Aunty Indra, I know you still vex with me, but I have to ask you something.’

She let out one steups. ‘You right about that. What you want? I hope is not money you want because your Uncle Ricky and me don’t have nothing more to give you.’

They certainly not teaching forgiveness at St. Theresa’s church.

‘No, Aunty.’

Maybe I should leave it alone. I want to but I can’t.

‘I was wondering, now I’m working and thing, if you could tell me who my father is. It only natural I want to know. And I big enough to take the truth.’

She bit her lip. ‘If your mother wanted you to know then she would have told you. But she passed now and that is that. You can’t live your life expecting no father to come carry you away. Is you and you alone have to make something of your life. And let this be the last time you bother me with this foolishness. I have enough worries of my own.’

That was so kind and helpful. Thanks for nothing. Bitch.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Although as a child Bea had frequently sat in these pews, this was the first occasion when she really examined the flooring of St. Theresa’s Church. Between rows of shoes, it was clear that the mosaic of large black and white tiles was not in the best condition. Hairline cracks had created a secondary pattern and time had ground the white closer to a dirty grey and left the black lacklustre. It did not help that it had rained earlier and the crowd of perhaps two hundred people packed inside the small church had each brought a little of the damp earth indoors. Father John’s words interrupted her thoughts.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to commend our brother, Alan Jeremiah Clark, who has been called home to the arms of Jesus Christ our Saviour who is in Heaven.

It needed a proper clean on hands and knees with a solution of one part vinegar to three parts water. After that, if the tiles still looked dull, they should try one of the specialist tile-cleaning liquids sold at the hardware.

Let us stand and join in singing hymn number 714, ‘Through all the Changing Scenes of Life’.

At a push they could even try a mild solution of bleach and water, but that risked damaging the tiles further. Bea wondered who was in charge of decisions on tile cleaning. Was it the priest? Perhaps a particularly involved lay member with special knowledge of tiles? Or was there a church committee entrusted with such decisions? Maybe, thought Bea, the issue fell through the cracks. Ha, ha, ha. The congregation was singing.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me,

With me exalt His name;

When in distress to Him I called,

He to my rescue came.

The black and white tiles faded into blocks of colour in her mind. Black and white. All light and no light. Bad and good. Dirty and clean. Base and sophisticated. Hell and Heaven. The pews were flooded with black cloth, draped, stretched and pulled over brown skins.

According to Aunty Doris it was becoming quite acceptable to wear alternative, bright colours. She had even heard of a man whose deathbed wish was honoured when everyone wore yellow to see him off this earthly existence.

‘The Lord be with you,’ Father John proclaimed.

Her funeral would be an all-white affair.

‘And also with you,’ responded the congregation.

If white was good enough for the queens of mediaeval times then it would do for her.

‘A reading from John 14, verses 1-6,’ said Father John.

White was the colour of mourning for millions of Hindus. She made a mental note to wear more white.

In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.

If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare

a place for you?

And if I go and prepare a place for you,

I will come again and will take you to myself,

so that where I am, there you may be also. 

Bea wondered if her maternal grandma seated a few rows behind had worn white when her husband died. In spite of all her misgivings about the living Alan, this grandmother did her duty with an appearance. The congregation was asked to stand. It was that wonderful hymn asking to be made a channel of peace, to bring love where there was hatred, and to pardon those who injure us.

Bea’s mind drifted to other funerals she had attended. Great-Aunty Sonia had been given quite a send-off. Was it really ten years since her cancer-riddled body had been laid to rest? Back then the family had been unable or unwilling to channel inner or outer peace. From the moment of death to the descent of the coffin into the earth, her husband, children and step-children publicly raged and tore at Great-Aunty Sonia’s memory. No one could forget the moment her stepson, emboldened by the weed of wisdom, seized the briefest of pauses between hymn and scripture reading to leap to his feet. Those present in that packed church twittered for months, perhaps years after, as they recalled his incoherent but impassioned speech setting out the reasons why his father should never have married the now deceased blood-sucking bitch in the first place. It had taken three male relatives to forcibly remove him from the church. Bea smiled to herself that this would never happen at a funeral in Boston.

Father John announced that Bea would deliver the eulogy. She felt an imposter taking centre stage. Her wish was not to speak at all, but Granny Gwen had insisted.

‘How it go look if you don’t say two word in the church?’

‘But Granny Gwen, I can’t talk in front of all those people. Uncle Robin should be doing it, or one of Dad’s good friends. I bet one of them really wants to do it.’

‘So what you have all them big degree for?’ asked Granny Gwen scornfully. ‘Your father work hard-hard to make sure you always had the best of everything. This is how you show your respect?’

The old woman had turned away muttering. ‘Young people today too damn ungrateful. Think they get big all by theyself like nobody ain’t help them.’             

Bea stepped up to the podium. ‘I have been asked to speak about my father.’

Someone rushed up to adjust the microphone downwards to her mouth. ‘I have been asked to speak about my father,’ she repeated in a disconnected, newly amplified voice. ‘He was a popular man who was much loved by all who knew him.’

A loud deep cry rose from somewhere on the left side of the congregation.

‘Oh God he gone! Oh God Alan gone!’

Everyone turned to try and locate the cries. It soon became apparent that the guttural sounds and loud pleadings to the Almighty were originating from a petite woman, yellow-skinned with jet-black straight hair and oriental features.

Bea’s mind raced. There really are more than fifty ways to leave a lover.

Get that stupid song out of your mind, Bea urged herself. Concentrate.

The woman’s cries ebbed and flowed. ‘Oh God he gone! He gone! Why Jesus had to take away my Alan?’

People stared at each other and whispered about the woman they did not recognise as either a family member or friend. Those sitting closest tried to pacify her, but the wailing continued to cut into the sacred atmosphere.

After about thirty long seconds of this explosive grief, Father John whispered in Bea’s ear that they would pause for a hymn to give the lady time to compose herself and then continue with the eulogy.

Bea returned to her seat and Father John directed the organist to move along to the next hymn. But even through a hearty rendition of ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ the howling and distressed cries could still be heard. As the organ faded Bea was beckoned to the pulpit for a second attempt.

‘All you carrying on like I ain’t here,’ the woman bellowed. ‘I ain’t see me name with the death notice. You could leave me out but this is a public church and all God’s children welcome here. Treating me like the man never love me.’

‘We pray that our sister and others in the congregation will now be comforted by the words of Beatrice Clark, Alan’s only child,’ said Father John.

‘Well, we know that not true,’ laughed the unknown woman. ‘Gwen well know that I did treat the man like a king. Now he gone and dead. Oh, God help me!’

The unknown woman had cornered the market in popular grief, and throughout Bea’s brief eulogy there were occasional high-decibel cries bemoaning the loss of Alan Clark. Despite stiff competition, the stranger’s grief retained pole position to the end.

Bea cleared her throat. ‘I have been asked to speak about my father. He was a popular man who was much loved by all who knew him.’

She paused and took a deep breath. It was now or never.

‘Truth is, I don’t remember when we last spoke. But we have been actively engaged in a joint project. Over the last two decades we have been building a wall of silence. When he died the wall was near completion.’

Bea shifted her weight from one leg to the next and glanced up at the congregation. Everyone was concentrating on her short form. Even the wailing Chinese woman looked momentarily rapt.

‘The building materials we used are testament to our innovation and persistence,’ continued Bea. ‘We stacked block upon block using whatever we found at hand. Sometimes we worked away using resentment and anger. Those are materials you can count on to withstand hurricane-force winds. At other times pride would be added for fortification.’

Bea felt the burning of two hundred pairs of eyes in this church with standing room only. She had made it this far. There was no turning back.

‘But a huge amount of rejection, dejection, regret, self-preservation and denial were harnessed as well, until the wall of silence was a solid and deafening structure. While we worked there were continual challenges, assaults that the wall of silence barely endured. There were even incursions that threatened to undermine its very foundations. Once or twice I thought the whole barricade would tumble down.’

Her voice broke and she took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘Since I have lost my fellow builder I can only give you a partial history of attacks on the integrity of the wall as I witnessed them. One of the hardest to repel was the sight of my father on his side of the wall. Every time I saw him I wanted to smash a brick and reach over.

‘Daddy, you have died young and so will forever be preserved in my memory with a lean, muscular body and handsome, rugged face. Pity I did not inherit your good looks and, ahem, height. I can still see your thick head of hair, always well groomed, and your elegant hands. Experience taught me to look quietly so that I could glimpse that beautiful smile lighting up your eyes, or watch you walk away with your deliberate, measured gait.’

Bea dared to look up at the congregation. There was a look of disbelief on some faces, mere surprise on others. No one looked bored.

‘The wall of silence managed to withstand the assault of these periodic sightings of my father. But when they were accompanied by touch you could actually see this huge fortification shake as if it were at the epicentre of an earthquake. With the Dutch courage of Johnny Walker, he occasionally reached over the wall to give me one of his warm bear hugs. Lately these have been rare. It is unclear how many embraces our old wall would withstand if we administered this stress test now. It certainly caused cracks and crevices in the early days when, as a child, I seized every opportunity to literally hold on to my Daddy in the time we had together. Such a shame. So simple an act might have blown the whole wall apart.’

Bea’s eyes welled up with tears and she could barely read from her script. ‘Territory demarcated, divided, enclosed, protected. We were walled in, walled up.’

The tears were now big drops blotting the printed pages, but she had to keep going. It was almost over.

‘And like Hans Christian Anderson’s story about the little match girl,’ she said through tears, ‘I wish a little light, as small as that from the box of matches you always carried in your pocket, Dad, the one you used to light your cigarettes. I wish that light would magically transform this wall into one of Granny Gwen’s light net curtains and I could see you alive and well once more. And like the little match girl, no price would be too high if we were on the same side of the wall.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

If people would please stay out of my damn business I can get on with my f-ing life. They wanted me to get a job and I did. Now they don’t like the friends I made at the café. They don’t like me going to the beach come weekend. The pay not good enough. Nanny wants me to ask Mr. Morris for a raise. How I going to ask for a raise when I lucky to have a job at all? She doesn’t realise how hard things are out there. Yes, I know he is paying me a little bit less than the others, but I am younger and I’ve not been there a year yet.

Aunty Indra thinks he’s taking advantage of my age and making me do too much for the pay. She wants to come down to the café and talk to him. How will that look? My Aunty Indra coming in my workplace to talk to my boss? They didn’t give a shit about me, now they care so much they want to come and ruin my job. I have begged them to please leave it alone. I will ask for a raise when the time is right. I reminded them I didn’t exactly have a choice of jobs. Every day they don’t appear at the café is a blessed relief.

And both Nanny and Aunty Indra have this really annoying habit of talking about me in front of me, as if I’m invisible. You should hear them. Once I heard Nanny saying to some stranger that I should learn to do hairdressing. People does always need their hair do, recession or no recession. Aunty Indra wants me to learn to cook properly so I can get a job in a hotel kitchen or a fancy restaurant. She is convinced there are always chef jobs because Trini people like their food. But Nanny doesn’t agree. It seems I am so hot up with myself I better off doing beautician work. I could do nails. Not once have those blasted witches taken a second to ask me if I want to do hair or nails or cook. And I don’t see why anything has to change. I am doing fine, thank you very much. They should f-off.

Is one thing to talk about me like this in the family, but Nanny’s mouth never tired. Granny Gwen came for a Saturday visit. She doesn’t make it so often any more but when you think you haven’t seen her for a while she pops right back up on the veranda drinking tea and quoting scriptures. The old lady ain’t reach too long before I heard Nanny bad-talking me. She’s carrying on about how I am happy to settle for a job in a café where I only getting paid ten dollars an hour and the minimum wage is twelve.

I feel like cussing the whole lot of them, but I took a deep breath and went in my bedroom with a magazine. While I living under the bitch roof I have to learn to chill. Instead of being proud that I get a job she can’t resist putting me down in front everybody who set foot in this house and probably half the people in church too. Don’t think it ain’t crossed my mind to put a drop or three of castor oil in she food. That would shut her up for a good while.

I was bored hiding in my room away from the old ladies so I decided to do over my nails. The red colour is chipping off. It’s hard to keep them looking good but I like to try. I was lying down on the bed letting them dry properly when someone knocked on the door. Is Granny Gwen calling for me. If my nails get smudged I will be real vex. I managed to open the door carefully.

‘Yes, Granny Gwen? You going now?’

‘I getting ready to go but I wanted to ask you to come by me tomorrow.’

‘Me and Nanny?’

‘No. Just you. I want you to come and spend a little hour with an old lady. You could do that for me?’

‘Of course I will, Granny Gwen. What time?’

‘Come about four o’clock. You want me to send the car for you?’

‘If you don’t mind. Bus does run slow on a Sunday.’

‘No problem. Good. So it’s me and you tomorrow. You will get to taste my home-made coconut ice cream, and the tree have chenette for so.’

‘Okay. Thanks, Granny Gwen. Tomorrow then.’

I closed back the bedroom door carefully. No smudge. Now what was that all about? She has never asked me to come visit her alone before. I wonder if she saved up speaking out all this time and she finally ready to confront me about the hundred dollars. If she asks I will have to play dumb. She can’t prove a thing after so long. Or Nanny might have put her up to this. She probably beg Granny Gwen to “talk some sense” into her wayward granddaughter. I have no bone with Granny Gwen. I will go tomorrow, eat some ice cream, get a bag of chenette and come back home in time to catch
The Simpsons
on TV.

Of course it was wishful thinking that I would get off easy with only coconut ice cream. Granny Gwen showed me around the house. I had only ever been on the outside patio where they seem to spend most of the time. This time I went inside. She has a nice sitting room that is perfect. I don’t think she allows anybody in there, much more let people eat and drink in it. And the bedrooms all have beautiful quilts with matching pillowcases. I can’t imagine actually sleeping in such a pretty bed and messing it up.

The dining room is a separate room with a huge mahogany table and eight matching chairs. The table is set with fancy plates, glasses and napkins like she expecting the prime minister or Brian Lara for a visit. We sat down in the kitchen and it was then I realise what was missing.

The house was empty.

Granny Gwen is living in this big house all on her own. I thought her son Mr. Robin who runs the hardware lived here with his family, but she said he has his own place. Mr. Kevin, a half-brother or cousin, I’m not sure how he’s related, has always been here the few times I visited, but again this is not his house. Granny Gwen is alone.

‘You don’t get lonely here, Granny Gwen?’

‘You know my big son Alan who died used to live with me. Is he that I miss when I here by myself. The Lord knows why He chose to take him. We don’t know His plans.’

‘I went to the funeral. I was little but I remember it had a lot of excitement.’

Granny Gwen laughed.

‘At the time I was so vex, you hear? But now I look back and laugh. Alan was always in some confusion with the ladies.’

She took the ice cream out of the freezer.

‘How much you want? Two scoops or three?’

‘Only one. I have to look after my figure.’

‘Alan was a kind soul. Everybody liked him. And I have one granddaughter from him. Bea. She ain’t come to look for me since the funeral. But young people today busy. I suppose she will make it back one day.’

I tasted the ice cream. It was creamy with real coconut flavour. You can’t buy this in Hi-Lo supermarket.

‘Granny Gwen, this is real delicious. If it was in our freezer it wouldn’t last a day.’

‘I glad you like it. When my grandchildren were growing up I used to make all the time. Now is only when I feel like it I do a batch.’

I never knew Granny Gwen had had such an interesting life. She wasn’t always this old church lady. She showed me pictures of her when she was young. Gosh, she was pretty in her high heels and makeup and fancy dresses. And she was skinny like a size zero. She told me how every Saturday she and her friends used to go to dances up at a girls’ college that close down now. And her husband was one good-looking man too with his black hair all slicked back with a ton of hair cream and his drainpipe pants. And the albums were full of pictures of her children. I didn’t know she had lost a son before Mr. Alan. This poor lady has really seen some trouble.

Then she said she had a special picture to show me. It was of a little girl standing behind her birthday cake with candles glowing.

‘Who this remind you of?’

‘That is super weird.’

‘I don’t know how long I been meaning to bring the picture to show you.’

‘Who is it?’

‘That is my granddaughter Bea when she was about ten or eleven. But it could have been you. I can see your face in it. I tell myself I must show Tina how she resemble my granddaughter for so. You could pass for Bea’s sister easy-easy.’

I took the picture and looked at it again. ‘But Granny Gwen, I don’t look like her now. At the funeral I remember she was so short. I’m five-eight.’

‘Yes. Poor child. That is from her mother side of the family. Her mother Mira must be five foot at most. That family is a set of short people.’

‘But I must say we did look alike at that age.’

‘You see, for me there is still a resemblance. I think that is why I take a liking to you from the start. I saw little Beezy in you.’

I concentrated on scraping up the last of my ice cream because for some reason my eyes had welled up with tears.

‘You want more ice cream, Tina?’

‘No thanks,’ I said, wiping my eyes quickly. ‘Like you want to make me fat?’

‘You have a long way to go before anybody could call you fat.’

‘I wish you were my granny.’

‘Never mind, child. You should think of me like a next granny.’

The place was cooling down so we went outside and sat on the chairs under the chenette tree. It had bunches and bunches of the little green balls of fruit. I love when you crack the shell and suck the pink flesh. When I was small I used to be afraid of swallowing the seed inside, though now I don’t know why because it ain’t a tiny seed.

‘When the driver come back I will ask him to pick some for you. The tree only ever have sweet chenette. My late husband, God rest his soul, planted all the fruit trees, but this one is my favourite.’

It was turning into such a nice visit. No one barking at me. No one telling me off because my skirt too short or my nails too long or they don’t like how my hair do. I wish she was my grandmother instead of the witch rocking in the veranda back home.

It is so easy talking to Granny Gwen. I told her about the café and how the men like to call me ‘Reds’ but I could give as good as I get. And I told her how the staff does treat me like the baby. Gerry gives me a drop home any time he can and the girls and I meet up to lime in the mall sometimes. Granny Gwen asked if Gerry is my boyfriend. I had to laugh. She has clearly never seen how ugly Gerry is. I’m sorry. He has a good heart but that cannot make up for his four gold teeth.

And while we laughing I couldn’t help but think of the wrong I done this old lady taking her money. Yes, it did get put back, but that is not the point. I took from this sweet person who has only ever shown me kindness. It’s at the tip of my tongue to tell her, but what will happen then? You can imagine the trouble that would cause once Nanny hear? And Granny Gwen would never invite me again to come over for ice cream and to sit so peacefully under her chenette tree. I wish I could tell her, though. Maybe there will come a time when telling her won’t be so bad and she would forgive me and there would be no bad blood between us. But that day is not today.

‘Tina, you look like you loss away.’

‘Sorry. It so quiet and calm here.’

‘How much years you have? Is seventeen?’

‘Almost eighteen. Why?’

‘Your Nanny been talking to me.’

So all the ice cream and sweet talk was to soften me up for the kill.

‘Tina, she worried about you.’

I got up and shook a branch of the chenette tree.

‘She don’t have to worry about nothing. I have a job. I paying rent. What more she want?’

Granny Gwen let out a deep sigh. ‘She find the place you working a little too rough for a girl like you from a good Christian home.’

‘I never complain.’

‘Well, I have a better idea.’

‘What?’

I am so glad now I didn’t confess about the money.

‘Why you don’t come and work in the hardware back office? The girl we have could teach you how to do secretarial work.’

My head was spinning. Granny Gwen kept talking, which was great because I did not know what to say.

‘Nanny say how you not even getting the minimum pay he suppose to give you. I could pay you well and you will be working in a nice little office where nobody will trouble you. This hard work on your feet whole day can’t be easy.’

I finally looked her in the eye.

‘Nanny put you up to this? You all had a good gossip about me and decide everything before I even reach here today? I wouldn’t be surprised if she hand in my notice for me already.’

‘No. That is not what happened. Yes, your Nanny give me the story about your working, but it was my idea to offer you a job here.’

I looked away.

‘I swear on my late husband’s grave that I ain’t say a word to a living soul. To be honest I ain’t even check with me son Robin. But he will do what I tell him. Is you I asking. And if you don’t want it that is not a problem. I will never say a word to your Nanny.’

I can’t understand why she would be so nice to me. I am nothing to her and if she really knew about me she would not be making this offer.

‘I don’t know what to say, Granny Gwen.’

‘Look, think about it for the week, and when I come by you next Saturday you can tell me if you want the work or not.’

I don’t know what to do. I like that I have a job that I found all by myself and don’t owe nobody nothing. This new offer is somebody going out of their way to help me. I don’t think I felt wrapped up in so much kindness since the time when I was little and Miss Celia used to give me bottles and bottles of sorrel at Christmas.