Red Jacket (31 page)

To Come or Not to Come

It's late now, nearly eleven, almost time to call Mona, and certainly time to stop thinking about a woman he screwed once, or more accurately, on one occasion, and hasn't seen for four years. Besides, tomorrow isn't going to be just another day. It doesn't appear from Gordon's call that either police or army have made any progress in discovering who has killed the minister, so any number can play.

Mona and Grace are still tumbling about in his head with occasional others from the past: Mireille, a stunning Haitian woman and the only student he'd ever been involved with, and Irene, a professor of his when he'd just started graduate work, brilliant, moody, way out of his league. Stop! he tells himself. He's a one-woman man. Grace is his woman now, his wife.

At this point he knows he is in serious trouble.

There's always been a heated argument in St. Chris about fidelity and the pervasiveness of men's “wild-willy” habits, with the good churchmen (often the most wayward) maintaining that men are perfectly capable of keeping their particles in their pants, except for church-sanctioned use; social historians averring it was the white colonial oppressors who had encouraged wanton rutting to create new human chattel; and randy fornicators insisting, “If God make man, don't wild willies must be part of His plan?”

He admires fidelity, probably because infidelity stridently broke up his parents' marriage, the offending party being his father. When the union was collapsing, punctuated by quarrels at dusk and daybreak so loud they blasted through concrete walls, his mother would tell his father, “I love you to distraction, not destruction. We can't go on like this!”

Mark had just turned twelve when she left, straight for the airport. His father married his pregnant girlfriend as soon as the divorce was final. Although the agreement had been that Mark and Ben, his brother a year younger, would stay in St. Chris with their father until their mother sent for them, his father's bride was not happy about old offspring being imported into her new marriage. They'd gone to his mother's cousin in Barbados as a stopgap measure. It turned out to be a big gap: it took six years to stop it.

In many ways, he's grateful for that. Barbados, also known as Bim, was a much better place than St. Chris to get a taste of what the world was like. A small white élite, wealthy and powerful, had a heavy hand on the economic and political life of the island. Not that you'd get that admission from too many black Bajans, whose version was that whites were in the island on their sufferance. Black Bajans were mostly content not to buck the status quo. Bim sported a rock-steady dollar, a high level of literacy, a wild Atlantic coast in the east and sweet warm Caribbean waters in the west. For many tourists, it was the paradise of the Caribbean.

Barbados had been salvation for Ben. Mark had suspected that his younger brother was homosexual even before Ben was a teenager. By the time they finally talked about it, Ben had figured things out, no doubt with help from friends also struggling with being who they were. St. Chris has a barbaric attitude to people attracted to the same sex, men especially. Ben's rite of passage had been easier in Bim than it would have been in St. Chris. So Mark is grateful to Barbados. It gave himself and Ben an education, beach cricket, and sun-warm sea, and it gave Ben the chance to be safe and sane. Sex is such a vexed and vexing business. Or should he say gender? He supposes he means both. Now, with this HIV/AIDS business, it is impossible, in the way that his mother used to say to him and Ben, “You children are impossible!”

How on earth do young people manage? Not that old people manage much better, but chances are if you stick with a faithful wife and with one or two women whose habits you know ... The absurdity of what he's thinking doesn't escape him, just as he knows there's no comfort to be taken in the idea that sex with a condom is safe — if it doesn't slip, leak, burst, all of which have happened to him. Maybe they should characterize condoms the way they do polls, “accurate to within three point five degrees nineteen times out of twenty.” Sometimes he considers whether one day, in a store or bank or classroom, he'll encounter a young person behind a desk, a counter, a lectern, maybe a pulpit, whose face will tell him unequivocally about one of those leaky prophylactics. He doesn't dwell on it; all men must wonder. A few years before, the island's funny bone had been tickled by raucous jokes about shipments of condoms from China, the downfall of greedy local investors who'd neglected important baseline statistics. By no means a laughing matter!

HIV/AIDS is not funny either. They all know that, he and the other Caribbean males who “run tings,” women being among the “tings.” Still, most have no intention of forgoing bareback riding to go undercover in rubber contraptions.

He'd proposed to Gordon Crawford that they arrange for Grace to meet with the seven UA deans and the principals of teachers' colleges, most of whom would be at graduation. He knows she's been pushing regional governments to consider an HIV/AIDS education program for secondary schools, but she seems less concerned about universities and he wonders why. Perhaps she assumes they will all come on board in time, or perhaps it's personal and has something to do with him.

Which is of course ridiculous!

He is suddenly furious with himself that even now, after her clear dismissal, after her stalwartly maintaining her distance, even now he would be glad to be assured that he means something to her.

He checks his watch. Eleven. Time to call Mona.

“Hi Mona, honey. How are you?”

“Much improved.”

“I'm glad. Listen. I better tell you right off. Bad news … ”

“Oh, no, Mark! You sick? I can change my flight and come sooner!”

“I'm fine. It's you I'm concerned about. I don't think you should come.”

“But I just told you I'm okay.”

“It's not you creating the problem, sweetheart. It's the damn place that's boiling! Nobody know how much hotter it's going to get.” He doesn't know why it comes out that way.

“Queenstown hot in November? Not that all those academics and politicians don't deserve to sweat. But that's no reason for me not to come. Is Trini I grow up in!”

“I'm sorry, hon. I'm dead tired and my brain and mouth are not connecting so well. It's got nothing to do with temperature. You've not heard any newscasts?”

“Nuh-uh. One of the perks of your not being here! No newscasts.”

“You remember a fellow named Edwin Langdon? Came here as a mature student? Graduated the year we got married?”

“Cute chap? Short? Dark? Used to capture the podium at speaker's corner and preach the virtues of self-reliance?”

“Him same one. He's minister of education since the last cabinet shuffle. Was. They shot him this afternoon.”

“Shot him? You mean shot him dead?”

“Dead.”

“Good God Almighty! Who? Why?”

“No one's sure, so I won't give you what's mere conjecture. There's been unrest in some of the tourist towns, including Halcyon and Stanton. People in the party have been attacked as well.”

“But are you all going to be okay? What about graduation?”

“That's why council's going on into tomorrow. We stopped early today so people could be in by six. The city is under curfew till the fellows figure out what's going on, if maybe the bullet was meant for someone else. Makes most sense and would be the best scenario.”

“A sorry business when a confusion in murder victims is the best scenario!”

“We've talked with the PM's office, the police commissioner, and the army folks. They feel it's a bigger risk not to proceed, so we'll probably go ahead with graduation, and at that point UA will use all media to confirm that the ceremony is still on.”

“But what a tragedy, Mark!”

“It's going to be under tight lock and key, and any jollifications that were planned for afterwards have to be cancelled, what with the curfew.”

“That's really sad for the graduates and their families and all.”

“We'll do our best to keep everything as normal as possible, but there'll be soldiers, police, etc. So you see why I'm saying you shouldn't come.”

Short pause. “If you're there, the graduates, their families, I don't see why I can't be. In fact, I should be.”

“They're different, Mona.”

“I don't see how. What sort of signal does it send to people, if you let students, their families, and friends run risks, but not your wife?”

“If you come, you're taxing an already over-taxed security system.”

“No more than anyone else, Mark.” It is the tone she uses when she's made up her mind. “My flight leaves early, so I'll be at The Xooana in good time.”

“Fine.” It is the tone he uses when he's yielded against his better judgement. “Council shouldn't go past midday, so I'll be here. Celia will meet you.”

“I'll look for her. Don't collide with any bullets.”

“I won't. Fly safely.” He falters. “I love you.”

“Love you too. Night-night.”

Her mother says her navel string is “cut on stubborn,” an obstinacy now compounded with foolhardiness. It's just a fact that if she doesn't come there will be one less person to worry about. He replaces the receiver and sits back with such force in the antique armchair that it nearly tips over. Truth is, the whole business with Grace promised to be a lot easier if Mona wasn't coming.

A Pain in the …

17 November 1998

Dear Gracie,

We plan to come to see you at the SCR Hotel tonight but like how they shoot the Minister nobody must be in the street past six. We come in early yesterday for we get a drive in the morning with Mr. Sampson and we get in just a little past two. We are safe here and the church folks taking very good care of us. Not all of us come up from Wentley I will explain when we see you like how you leave to go Haiti this morning and also seeing as they never consider to invite us to anything only the ceremony never mind we is your family. We sorry we don't have no way to see you before the graduation on Saturday. Edgar say he meeting you at airport when you come this evening but if we all come with him to collect you he not going have time to bring us back down here and then go all the way to his place so we will all just have to wait till the very occasion. There is plenty talking about the horrible shooting and Pastor is holding special midday service to pray for the country and against the violence and of course for the peaceful rest of Mr. Langdon soul. We will go to the service and if they keep a vigil here in pastors residence tonight we will stay up for that too. I know that God still in charge and life taking is serious matters. Lord help the person who take the Minister life for his soul in grave danger. As usual your Ma cannot stop talking. Is just glad we glad to have you nearby.

Everybody here and leave back send love.

God bless.

Ma

Grace folds up Ma's letter, puts it in her handbag on the floor beside the bed where she always keeps it, and turns off the bedside lamp. It's early, not even seven, but already dark outside. There is no noise on campus, which is odd, until she remembers the city is under curfew, the prime minister having read the riot act the previous afternoon because of the shooting of the minister of education. Luckily, the plane from Haiti had landed at four on the dot with almost no one on board, so she'd been at The Xooana by twenty to six. She had expected Edgar to meet her, but he hadn't turned up. Someone from UA had come, a Ms. Achong, and they'd reached The Xooana quick sticks, for the roads were empty.

She'd tried to call Ma and Pa at the number for the church house where they were staying, but it just rang and rang. She wonders how the letter from Ma came to be at the desk and worries about where Edgar could be. She hopes he is okay. She feels odd, disconnected, as if things are slipping away, awareness, alertness, energy: it's not so much fatigue, more an ebbing, as if someone is modulating her life the way you turn down the volume on a radio or TV.

Mark Blackman. She gives herself special permission to think, “Jeremiah's father,” for she has taught herself not to regard him in that way. She hadn't seen him at the seminar, but then chancellors don't wander around universities, never mind she still thinks doing walkabout is a good idea. She'd told him so once. Right now she doesn't care where he walks or if he can walk at all. But he is Jeremiah's father and, as Phyllis often points out, the odds are he'll in time find out, and if he does, he might assert his rights to his child. She's certain Mona hasn't told him about Jeremiah, or she'd have heard from him long ago. But what if Mona decides to? She's thinking about Mark and his wife only on Jeremiah's account. For that reason, quickly in and out of UA suits her fine. Mona is bound to come, she of the greedy coolie eyes, so the less time around them, the better. Mona nags at her though, an irritant like the blister that's developed over a small cut on her little finger since yesterday afternoon. It first itched and now it aches.

Why doesn't Mona make her own baby and stop sniffing round Jeremiah?

The two men she'd gladly have made a baby for are unavailable, one dead and the other as good as dead, for making babies, anyway. So Jeremiah is it, all that there is to her life, the resolution of all her dilemmas of unbelonging. He's certainly black enough to be a Carpenter, and he's the person who binds her to her impossible birth mother, twelve years her senior, day in, day out; the person who erases by his bright, rumbunctious self every dread aspect of his and her heritage; the person whom she can wallow in caring for and being kin to. If his grandfather is his grandmother's half-brother, and his father, who doesn't even know he exists, is another woman's husband, so what? If he isn't the fruit of a great passion but merely of the passing encounter of two bodies in the night — well, morning, more accurately — he is still her joy, her purpose, her completion. He's hers. Not Mark's and not Mona's!

As she rummages in her bag for pain tablets, she wonders if anyone has done a study on how many men in the Caribbean have children about whom they know nothing. She swallows two pills with a long drink of ice water and turns off the light, but her arm won't let her be. She can't figure out what's wrong with it, nor resist gazing at it in the dimness, turning on the light to peer at it, imagining there are tiny dots forming on the skin. Nor can she find a place to put it when she instructs herself to go to sleep once and for all.

“Jeremiah, you've had two stories. Time for bed now.”

“Phone, Mama. Phone. I'll get it!”

“It's okay, son. I have it.”

She turns and reaches for the phone with her left hand, for the pain in her other arm is fierce.

“Hi, Grace. It's me, Maisie.”

“Hi, Maisie. How you doing?”

“You sound sleepy. I hope I never wake you up?”

“I need to get up anyway. What time is it?”

“It's nearly eight.”

“What! What am I doing sleeping at this hour? Plus dreaming I'm at home with my son. I always get up at five!”

“I know. That's why I didn't feel any way about calling now. But you don't say yet how you doing.”

“Not so great. I have this blister thing on my hand and it is madding me. Getting bigger and bigger and burning me like scotch bonnet pepper. I'm looking for tablets as we speak.”

“Real sorry to hear.”

“Maybe a bit of fever too. Must be my heavy heart. Too much horrors in the world and now it come and find we right here in St. Chris.”

“You mean the minister? He is your friend?”

“He wasn't my good friend, but is somebody I know. They should have left him in the ministry of youth. It would have been safer.”

“You think somebody kill him for purpose?”

“I don't know, Maisie. We not Jamaica yet, but we getting close. Remember what you told me years ago, about why your family left?

“I couldn't forget that, but I thought things was improved.”

“Mr. Langdon and I were to talk about HIV/AIDS education early next year.”

“I'm truly sorry for the loss of your colleague, Grace. Anyhow, you busy, so I best state my case. I call for two reasons, though one sound real foolish.”

“Girl, you know you can tell me anything.”

“Mama big toe swell up last night, and she say every time that happen, bad things always follow.”

“I think the bad things happen already, Maisie!”

“Maybe so, but I still worrying about you. You should go doctor if you don't feel good. UA hospital is right there. Better safe than sorry!”

“It's really not so bad. If it get any worse, I promise to check the hospital.”

“I also call to tell you that is not only Sylvia I bring with me; Carlos come too. Sylvia wanted to come so bad I couldn't tell her no, and then she decide that we have to bring ‘your baby,' Carlos. Two of them insist they coming to celebrate with you, so if you hear cheering from all the way up here, is them making noise.”

“Why don't you bring them, Maisie? I'm sure I can get another couple of tickets to the ceremony.”

“They would love that, but I know everything is now a big confusion, so if is any worry, don't bother yourself. All the same, Grace, I would really love you to see Carlos now he grow up! One good-looking boy! Kind of on the short side but handsome can't done. Grace? Gracie? You hearing me?”

“Sorry, Maisie.” The blister is insistent. It is larger now, reaching onto her hand. The flesh nearby is red and warm. It strikes her that a small balloon of risen skin should not be the source of such wicked pain.

“So what about your boyfriend? I know is plenty money to come so far, but I figure the gorgeous beau would be here to cheer you in your triumphal hour.”

“I don't have any idea who you could be talking about. You see me have time for any beau?”

“I mean the big black dreamboat that God grab for himself before you could even stake a claim.”

“You mean Jimmy? No, man, Jimmy have serious work to do. I wouldn't ask him to leave it for this frivolousness.”

“I don't think you should make them hear you talking bout their big UA award as frivolousness!”

“Maisie, no award could be more important than Jimmy's work.”

“Yes'm. Whatever you say. I going say goodbye all the same. You have enough to do.”

“I'm glad you called. Say hi to everybody for me. Ring the UA switchboard a little later and ask for the Events Office. They will tell you where to pick up the tickets.”

“Okay. Check a doc if you keep feeling bad. Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Thanks, Grace. Bye, now.”

Water. She must have water. Her lips are so dry that the skin is flaking. On a table nearby she sees the plastic ice bucket she put there after she took pills before falling asleep last night. It's full because the ice cubes from last night have melted. She drains it to the bottom.