Red Jacket (3 page)

So Grace don't care when Stewie tell her that headmistress say she is not blood kin to the Carpenters for she feel deep down in her belly that by the events of that very day she is bound even more closely to Gramps, and that, never mind she not able to balance a basket on her head like Pansy and she not using no cloth like her big sister, never mind all that, she is grown up in those minutes, in the time from the lightning hit the tree till she fling herself down on the mattress and start to cry. The dark sky and the fiery branch and the balloon man in the forest are big as any Bible story, and she is brave and stalwart, like Esther and Judith.

Grace and Pansy

25 March 1969

My dearest little girl,

Happy birthday! Now you are nine and so I guess you are thinking about going into high school. I don't even know if you are in the country or in Queenstown. I think your Granny Vads perhaps knows, but she doesn't let anything out, as though she still hopes that if she doesn't talk about you, I will forget you. She should know better.

I hope you are at a good school, maybe in a place like Ramble Village, which is a pretty town near to Hector's Castle. I remember it because there was a grove of starapple trees there, and one time we went on a church picnic, and Granny Vads let us pick the starapples and bring them home and that was the first time I tasted matrimony, which is the sweetest tasting thing, made out of starapples and oranges and condensed milk. Granny Vads is not doing so well. She is up sometimes, but down so often that I worry about it.

There are all kinds of bad things going on right here in USA but I am not going to spoil your birthday with all of that. We have a new president, Mr. Nixon. I don't like him. He looks sneaking. Granny Vads says so too, but we will see what we will see. I have to rush off to work. God bless you for the next whole year.

All my love,

Your mother,

Phyllis

From she small, Grace don't like to go into places with plenty people by herself, and as she grow it don't get much better. She never know how to come into or leave a place, any place, no matter where — church, classroom, Mr. Wong shop. When it is her turn to run there to trust things, never mind that Mr. Wong look out for her and treat her specially, she is still full of such fear that she can barely say what Ma send her for. She feel people forever gazing at her, thinking she is funny looking. Try as she try, she can't fix that. Gramps say, “You have to play the hand life deal you.” So she keep on studying and learning and hoping that in time, she will know how to play her hand. Lucky for her, she like to learn new things, so even though the work get harder, she don't give up. When she reach Grade Six and go into the class that preparing for the General Entrance Exam, the load of hard work don't frighten her. If she do good in the exam, maybe she can win a scholarship place in high school. A good high school, if she is lucky.

As for Pansy, at age fifteen she is content to be in All-Age school. Ma encourage, Pa frown, and Gramps look like thunderclouds that going to rain down storm, but Pansy taking her own lazy time with her lessons. People just get too tired with Pansy. Conrad, Sam, and Princess still need plenty minding, and Ma is not well every now and then, for babies keep slipping away, and Gramps is getting older, and Pa, too.

From Pansy start hanging round the Ital Cookshop on her way home from school, Grace know nothing good not going to come of it, but what to do? When Grace venture a comment to Gramps about how Pansy always looking for trouble, though she don't say how, Gramps shake his head, declare, “That one own-way from she small. Your dead Granny Elsie is partly to blame. Is she mind Pansy when your Ma was still doing live-in housework, before Stewie and Edgar born. She spoil Pansy rotten. Never say ‘no' to that chile.”

Grace and Pansy walk home from school together from ever since Grace start going to school. Even when Grace is old enough to know the way, it continue like that. Which sometimes make her resentful.

“Grace, it's not that I don't think you can walk home by yourself now you are bigger,” Ma explain. “But I prefer if you and your sister walk together. Pansy can help you if anything happen, if you fall down, or twist your foot, or anything so. You can remind her that she not to take her own sweet time — and you know she is a sweet-time miss — for she have things to do here at home.”

The trouble start right as Mortimer arrive. The first time they see him, he is cutting lumber with a big saw on a workbench under a lignum vitae tree near to the boundary of land that used to belong to Miss-Maud-God-Bless-Her-Soul. Mortimer hang his shirt on a bush and is working with only his trousers on, his bare back looking like somebody spit on it, and buff it to a high shine. There are patches of sweat near the waist and on the rear of Mortimer's trousers. They hold on to his body in those places. He have on a belt crocheted in Rasta colours, red, green, and gold. As he slide the saw back and forth, the muscles in his arms and back remind Grace of a picture of sand dunes in her geography book. The colour is different, but the curves and ripples is the same.

The structure he is building is near to the boundary line of the property, with the front of it sitting near the bank side, so their journey take them straight past his workbench.

“Peace and love, and Jah blessing, sistren,” he say, nice and polite.

“Afternoon, sir,” Grace say.

“You not from round here?” Pansy slow down, smile her best smile.

Mortimer smile back, shake his head, go back to his work.

“So what you building?” Pansy now stop to talk.

“Come, Pansy,” Grace say soft-soft, holding onto her hand and tugging her fingers. “We not to stop.”

“Then why you don't go on?” Pansy hiss her reply.

“Just a small shop,” Mortimer answer, then he solve the problem, for he dip his head respectful-like and turn back to his saw in a way that show he done with conversation.

After that day, Grace notice that Pansy start staying late at school one day a week, sometimes two. She tell Ma she doing extra work so she can maybe pass the Grade Nine exam and get into the senior secondary school in Cross Town. Grace don't think that is true, but she don't say anything, just make sure that when school done, she hurry home if Pansy not coming.

One afternoon when she and Pansy walking home together and passing by the cookshop, which is now finished and painted in red, green, and gold, with a big sign that say “Ital Cookshop,” Pansy tell Grace to wait outside the shop, because she need to tell Mortimer something.

“What you could have to tell him?” Grace ask.

“None of your business!”

St. Chris roadside shopkeepers only stay in the shop front when things are busy. The rest of the time, they are in the back tending to their cooking or cleaning or baking or stocktaking or other business, always keeping an ear out for customers. All a customer have to do is rap on the counter or ring a bell, if there is one on the counter. Pansy walk into the front of the small shop like she accustomed, but she don't ring the bell. Instead, she knock on a door in the corner. Grace figure it must lead into the room behind, where Mortimer must be staying, for people live in their shop to keep their goods safe. Mortimer open the door, smile at Pansy, and then look up at Grace as if to give a greeting, but Pansy push him back inside and shut the door.

At the start, Grace can just barely hear the two of them talking. After a time, she hear nothing. Grace stand up, waiting and waiting. She can't picture what it could be that is taking Pansy so long to tell Mortimer, and in her belly-bottom she feel something bad is going to happen. Also she vex that Pansy abandon her, for even if the two of them always fuss, she depend on her big sister. She is thinking maybe she should take out a book and read, for it don't make no sense to just lean against the shop front, doing nothing, and she start to search in her bag, when she hear Pansy shout, “Lord Jesus! Oh God, help me!”

Pansy bawling for help louder and louder, so Grace get frighten. She drop her schoolbag, run quick into the shop, and push on the door to the back room with all her might. After a couple tries, it fly open. Staring at her are one pair of feet with brown socks, one pair of feet with no socks, four legs with no covering and Mortimer's bare bottom rising and falling with a motion that remind her of when he was using the saw.

Grace look, turn right around, march out, pick up her school bag, and start walking home. First she is furious with Pansy, but then she start to laugh. Mortimer have a nice body, but he is short. Pansy is a good-sized girl. Grace remember Gramps say, “Tiny insects pollinate sizeable flowers, Gracie. It's God's way.” She not sure this pollination of Pansy's sizeable flower is God's way, but she find it funny all the same.

“So … So you going to tell Ma?” Pansy is panting hard when she catch up with Grace and grab on to her. “You going tell Ma. Right, Miss Goody-Goody?”

Grace stop and study Pansy top to bottom, say nothing, turn, and keep going.

“I ask you a question,” Pansy say, rough and gruff, holding on to her again.

“Somebody have to tell Ma,” Grace say. “Better is you.”

“Make you couldn't just wait outside like I tell you?”

“If is that you was going there to do, why you never just send me home?”

“Is not that I was going there to do.”

“So what happen? Is force Mortimer force you?”

“After nobody can force me to do what I don't want to do.”

“So you must be force him.” Pansy make no response to that.

“So you going tell Ma?” Pansy ask again.

“No need to tell,” Grace say. “Your clothes mess up, you smell raw, and you look strange.”

“I look bad for true?” Pansy sound worried now.

“Couldn't look worse.”

“Well, you go in by the front door and talk to Ma, that is, if she reach home already. Make sure to take up plenty time. Meantime I will go in through the back and make haste and change.”

“Pansy, I not helping you hide it from Ma. You is my big sister…”

“Sister?” Pansy give out. “You is most definitely not my sister. After no sister of mine could look like you!”

Professor Carpenter

Grace is learning about the reproductive system. She is in General Entrance class, and it seem to her that she is learning like a machine. She can use a potato to make prints. She can use a piece of twine and find out the length of a river or road on a map, never mind how many wiggles they make. She know what things a seed need to grow. She know which food is good to eat and which not so good. She can say her tables up to fifteen times. And she start some algebra and geometry, sake of Gramps. She see him use them sometimes, and he explain them so easy, she take to them like a calf to the udders of the mama cow.

“The alphabet letter is like a question sign then, Gramps!” she declare in great excitement when he show her that in the equation a + 7 = 12, a equals 5.

“Ah, my granddaughter,” Gramps make a fist and rap her softly in the head. “You are such a clever ten-year-old. They cut your navel string on smarts!”

“I know about that too, Gramps. The navel string has a name. Umbilicus.” She pronounce the u like a o. “Is how a baby breathe and feed from its mother.”

“That's very good, Gracie. But you must say uhm-bilicus, not ohm-bilicus. Like hum, but without the aspirate.”

Gramps talk like that all the time. She long ago know what a aspirate is.

“Uhm-bilicus,” Grace intone.

“Egg-zactly.”

“Chicken-zactly!”

“Hen-zactly.”

“And the rooster comes along and then there's lots more…”

“Egg-zactlies!”

Two of them collapse into cackles of laughter. Is a joke they make up together.

Grace consider whether she could talk to Gramps about what is bothering her. Most of what she learn in class about the reproductive system is things everybody know long time. They learn in Genesis God say man must multiply and fill the earth, and from they small, Ma and Pa tell them how a man and woman come together to make babies and that this is a good thing, and nice too.

But there is something new. Teacher tell them about genes and say that is how children “get things” from their parents. She need to find out about her genes so she can know where her red skin and freckles and strange red hair and puss eyes come from, or if is true what Stewie hear the headmistress say that day at the standpipe at school, or what Mrs. Sommersby say in Mr. Wong shop, that she is “a jacket,” unsanctified fruit of a union between Pa and some red woman. And she need to know what else people get from their mother and father, if there is a gene for learning your times tables, a jokify gene, or a gene for being own-way like Pansy.

25 March 1971

My dearest daughter,

Well, by the time you get this you will already be eleven, and on the way into your twelfth year. In lots of ways, this is the last year for you to be a little girl, so I hope you make the most of it. Do all the things you really like this year. Play music with your friends using a comb and tissue paper, and a grater from the kitchen and an old pot for a drum and shakas off the poinciana tree. Play Hide and Seek, Hopscotch, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, Brown Girl in the Ring, and Blue Bird, Blue Bird In and Out the Window. Play all the skipping games: One, Two, Three, Auntie Lulu and Salt, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper; also Bandy Leg Lily and my favorite, Room for Rent.

I don't know if you have got your period yet. I'm sorry I'm not there to make sure you aren't upset when that happens. It's inconvenient but nothing to be scared of. And this is what makes it possible for you to have babies and you will want to do that in time.

I don't know what you will do to celebrate, but I hope you have a wonderful birthday. Maybe you will go to the Hale bird sanctuary in St. Charles and watch all kinds of birds come to eat and drink. Or maybe you will visit the big cotton tree near Perton with the door in its trunk and the little room inside for the duppies. Up here, everyone goes to a movie and then to McDonalds to eat junk food!

Some good things have happened this past year, thank God, but unfortunately a lot of bad things as well. I remain glad that you are there in St. Chris, though I would love above everything else to have you with me. I pray that you are happy and doing well in school and helping at home, now you are growing up.

I love you so very much. God bless you until next year.

Your mother,

Phyllis

Grace win a scholarship in the General Entrance Examination and the whole of Wentley Park Primary into jubilation. Not that it is the first scholarship anybody from that school win, for headmistress is well proud of the results the school get, year after year. But what Grace Carpenter do has never been done before, and headmistress admit she don't expect it to happen again. She get the second highest score on the test in the whole of St. Chris, and furthermore she score highest of all the girls that year. It sweet headmistress so much she give the school a holiday.

It don't usually happen this way, for headmistress normally get the results before the news reach the world through
The Clarion
. On the day of Grace triumph, however, the newspaper with the pass list arrive at Mr. Wong shop at the exact same time as the postmaster in Wentley hand headmistress the envelope with the results. So the news bruck out everywhere same time, and Gramps is wriggling round on his dancing feet when Grace reach home.

“Good afternoon,” he greet her. “May I carry your briefcase, Professor?” He twirl his hand in circles before him and then hold it in at his waist, bending forward in a deep bow. Then he stand up and salute. “I hear glad tidings, Prof. I hear you have secured a post that will take you to the big city and away from this humble village. We shall be sad to see you go, but we are elated at the good news.”

As she give him her schoolbag, Grace trying to hold in her smile so it is not too big across her face. She know Gramps is talking in that way to cheer her up, for over the waiting time, they more than once have a “Suppose I get a scholarship” conversation. She confess to him that she want to go to secondary school, but she don't want to leave home. There is no alternative, though, because the high schools near Wentley Park are too far for her to travel to each day, and Ma and Pa can't afford the bus fare anyhow. In Queenstown she can stay with Pa's cousin, Miss Carmen, who live close enough to the school so she can walk. And besides, if she get through to her first choice school, St. Chad's, it is a much better school than any of those nearby. So Queenstown it will have to be.

Now the news is here, Grace is happy but also confuse as well as frighten. She not surprise she win a scholarship, for she never think the exam was hard. In fact she not surprise she win a place at St. Chad's. But she wasn't expecting to come so high, and now she don't know how to feel or what to say. So she is scared about plenty things, starting from how to fix her face when she is getting all the praise, and going along to how she will manage all alone in a strange city.

She and Gramps walk up the path between the blooms of cosmos that are yellow, purple, and orange and grow thick and full, even in the dry time, for they drink up Ma's soapy washing water and keep coming back year after year.

“The Professor is pensive,” Gramps say. “Has she had a difficult day?”

Grace look up at Gramps and nod, and the smile that was going to break out is overtaken by fat tears that fill her eyes and run down her face, jumping from her chin onto the starched bodice of her uniform.

“I think you've had too much excitement, Miss Gracie. I made some Seville orange drink and there is bully beef and crackers left over from lunch. How would you like some vittles to celebrate?” Gramps don't comment on the tears. They go inside, and he set out lunch while Grace take off her uniform and change into her day clothes. Then they sit at the table.

“Lord, we give you thanks,” Gramps is praying, “for this food. Bless it unto our bodies and our bodies to your service. We thank you especially for the great success that Gracie has had news of today. Please help her to be joyful and not afraid, knowing your grace will be sufficient for her. Amen.”

“Amen.”

“Now eat up, Prof. Ma sends congratulations and Mrs. Sampson, too. Ma say she leaving early.”

“Pa coming early too, Gramps?”

“He will come as soon as he can. But you know he is not his own master.”

Grace don't understand that, for after all, slavery done long time.