The Heart Does Not Bend (5 page)

Uncle Freddie had been gone almost a year, and he had never written to his mother or to Monica. He had sent Dennis shoes and a felt hat, along with a miniskirt for Monica and a pair of red booties for his baby son, a pair of pedal-pushers for Punsie and black patent-leather shoes for me. The gifts came in a Christmas parcel my mother and Uncle Peppie sent to our house. The first time Uncle Freddie wrote, it was to me. I’d just turned ten that August. I was playing marbles outside the front gate with Punsie and some of the boys from the street when the mailman rode up to our gate on his bicycle.

“Mail from foreign, Molly!” he shouted. I scooped up the marbles I’d won and ran to take the letters from him. One was from Uncle Peppie, one from my mother and the last a birthday postcard for me from Uncle Freddie. Mama opened the two letters and separated out the two money orders, which she put in her bosom.

“Yuh mother seh to give yuh a big kiss. She seh another parcel on de way.”

I proudly showed her the birthday card from Uncle Freddie, with its picture of Niagara Falls. Mama’s face was glue tight, and she roughly asked, “Yuh can eat dat?”

With that she rose from her wicker chair and stormed through the gate. I sat on the verandah, staring at her empty chair, then I crawled under the fence to Petal’s yard. I searched the grass under the treehouse for grasshoppers, found four and ate them like they were my last meal. I climbed to the treehouse and sat alone, confused by Mama’s response to the card. Petal joined me sometime later, and I let her fill my head with stories of America’s wildlife, which she’d watched on TV.

It was pitch-dark outside when I crawled under the fence and back to our verandah. The house was empty. I waited in the dark, frightened of the bats that stuck to the ceilings. This was the first time Mama had left me on my own. Uncle Mikey soon came home.

“Come here, Dutty Bus,” he said softly, using his special name for me. “What happen? Where Mama?” I began to cry as I relayed the story about the postcard.

“Dat bwoy going to be her ending,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Yuh eat anything dis evening?”

I shook my head.

“Come let we mek a egg sandwich, and then we go find her. Don’t cry.”

We ate scrambled eggs with hard-dough bread and a glass of milk, and then we went to Olive’s to look for Mama. She wasn’t there. Later we found her in Shady’s Hideaway. She was sitting on a chair, her head slumped on one of the Formica tables.

Uncle Mikey pulled her to her feet, and with his hand around her waist, we walked her home. Later, as we all huddled together on the living-room couch, Mama began to talk.

“Mikey, you and Peppie really good to mi, and we go through whole heap together. Ah remember when ah had dat restaurant downtown years before we buy dis place, is you and Peppie helping me. Unnu scrub pot, wipe de floor, carry de heavy meat, de big crocus bags full a green banana and yam. Freddie and Glory was still in Port Maria wid Mammy. Dem never know ’bout dem hardships, for ah mek sure ah send money every month fi dem. De only thing ah couldn’t provide fi any of you was real education, ah never have dat kind a money, and ah needed you two bwoys to help me. Unnu come to town when unnu just turn teenager and unnu never fail me yet …you bwoys help mi and treat mi better dan a husband. Nutten nuh come free or easy especially fi poor people. Unnu father was a wutliss wretch, and a same way Freddie turn out. But old-time people always say when a tree bend from de beginning, it grow twist up, and him just like him father.”

“Never mind, Mama, don’ think about all dat. We don’t want for anything now. Dat is de past,” my uncle said. His hand travelled across her back and massaged her shoulders. She began to cry, and we both hugged her.

Much later, in bed, Mama’s hands searched for mine as she began to sing softly, her breath burdened with Wray & Nephew white overproof rum.

Mama got up early the next morning. She looked tired, especially her eyes, but neither I nor Uncle Mikey said anything about the night before.

“Mama, de garden need a little care,” my uncle said, looking through the living-room window.

“Yes, ah know, ah try keep up wid it, but wid de baking, sometimes mi too tired. Ah will have to get somebody to look after it.”

“Ask Grand-aunt Ruth nuh, she have ‘nuff people coming in and out of her restaurant.”

“Yes, dat’s a good idea.” She went to the window, looked out at the garden and said, “Ah miss Freddie, truly, if only fi dat.” My uncle didn’t respond.

The summer of 1968, when I was eleven, I saw my first restricted movie. Mama never ever missed a Sophia Loren movie, and she was not going to miss
Two Women
when it played in Kingston. We walked to the Ritz Theatre and saw RESTRICTED: 18 YEARS AND OLDER plastered on the billboard right beside Loren’s sultry lips and big breasts. Mama held my hand firmly, looked the cashier straight in the eye and bought our tickets. As usual we took seats in the front row. Before the movie started, Mama nodded at the screen. “Nutten wrong wid seeing dese movies,” she said. “There is good and bad in de world, and yuh have to see both to mek sense of things.”

The big curtains parted and when Sophia Loren came on the screen there was a hush in the theatre. Her lips were
tomato ripe, her body generous, her eyes hungry. We rode with her as she and her young daughter fled on a dirty, overcrowded train from Naples to the countryside. She was shabbily dressed, with bags and bundles on her head, but even in the midst of war, she was beautiful. Her daughter was by her side. For a moment I imagined Mama and me running from war. Sophia Loren looked so strong, she could protect her daughter from everything. Her hips swung just like Mama’s did when she carried the pastries in a cardboard box on her head to the Chinese shops.

Suddenly Sophia Loren and her daughter were being raped by Nazi soldiers. I wanted to look away but couldn’t. Instead I held tightly to Mama’s hand. I felt the young girl’s fear and panic. Mama held me tight, saying, “Cover yuh face, put yuh head in mi lap.”

But it was too late. I had already seen too much. As we left the theatre, a little breeze rustled and a brown-and-white stray dog yelped in the dark. I held on to Mama’s hand. The movie stayed with me for a long time.

Grand-aunt Ruth’s restaurant was at the corner of Maxfield Avenue and Lyndhurst Road, in a piazza at the southeast corner. Mama delivered baked beef patties there twice a week, in return for a small sum of money when they were sold. The Chinese pastry shops that she supplied were nearby on Chisholm Avenue and Waltham Park Road. Sometimes, she walked over with the pastries in the morning after I had gone off to school, but it was not unusual for her to deliver them
after I got home from school. Grand-aunt Ruth’s restaurant was always our last stop. We would sit outside on the piazza while Mama and Grand-aunt Ruth caught each other up on other people’s business and talked unendingly about the leftover colonial government and corrupt politicians. Aunt Joyce, who stitched uppers at Maressa Shoe Factory, often joined them after work. She never took much to cooking, so she ate her meals at the restaurant, where she often met her suitor of the month. Mama claimed that eating out every night wasn’t healthy, even though the food was cooked by Grand-aunt Ruth herself. “Normal people eat at home around a dining table.”

Mama would ask her, “Joyce, when yuh going to settle down? It nuh good to run round so, yuh know.” Then Grand-aunt Ruth would add, “Is true, Joyce, yuh need to settle.” Aunt Joyce always answered with a mouthful of laughter, and her body, not unlike my grandmother’s in its generosity, threatened to bounce right out of her tight cotton blouse and pencil-straight short skirt. Then she’d say, “Ruth, yuh is like the kettle calling the pot black. You settle down?” She’d laugh again, looking around to capture her effect on any man passing by. “But mi have God,” Grand-aunt Ruth would answer. “Mi nuh need no other man.”

“Well, there yuh go,” Aunt Joyce answered, laughing again.

Truth was, Grand-aunt Ruth owned her house and had taken in Ivan and Icie as her own. “Yuh nuh change at all, eh?” Mama responded. “From we growing up as gal pickney, a so yuh stay, and mi end up wid de pickney dem and wutliss man.” Mama never failed to say that, and it always made me sad, but Aunt Joyce never let it bother her much. Again she’d
say, “There yuh go.” But I hated when Mama got like that. How could she regret having children when she loved me so much? I would not have been there with her had it not been for her daughter, Glory.

Grand-aunt Ruth had no children, but she’d do her best to comfort my grandmother. “Nuh mind, Maria, yuh have dem already and dem a big pickney, remember God have a plan for all a we.”

That particular night stands out even now because of a man named Myers, who came into the restaurant to buy a meal. Oxtail and rice, he ordered, then later a beef patty. When Grand-aunt Ruth told him that her sister had made them, he bought another one, praising their spices. He was a friendly man and he seemed to know a lot about everything. He bought us all a round of drinks: white rum for my grandmother, a beer for Aunt Joyce, soft drinks for Grand-aunt Ruth and me. Aunt Joyce invited him to sit with us. We learned that he was a gardener at Hope Road Botanical Gardens. Mama’s eyes lit up.

“Ah looking for somebody to help out wid mi garden. Yuh have de time?”

“Yes, ah can find de time,” he said. “Give mi de address an’ ah will come by tomorrow afternoon.” He was an ordinary-looking man, tall, medium-build and clean-shaven, younger than Mama by a few years. Aunt Joyce tried to interest him in other talk, but it was clear that he was concentrating on gardening and on my grandmother.

He came to our house the next day, and I was glad that I was on summer vacation. Mama and I were sitting on the verandah.

“Miss Maria, nuh worry. I can have dis garden back in top condition in no time. Dis is de kind of work I been doing all mi life.”

“Yuh can start tomorrow?” Mama asked.

“Can start right now if yuh please, Miss Maria.”

“No, tomorrow okay, de sun too hot.”

“Yes, it too hot to dig up de beds and transfer plants, but not hot enough to stop mi from pulling some weeds and raking de grass,” he offered.

“Dat okay. Start tomorrow. One more day won’t mek any difference. And call mi Maria. How much yuh going to charge mi? And how often yuh will work?”

“We can discuss that tomorrow,” he said sheepishly.

“No, mek we do it now,” she said.

He turned to me. “So how yuh doing, little Miss?”

“Fine,” I said shyly.

“Still on holidays?”

“Yes.”

“Good, den yuh can be mi little assistant in de garden.” His nut-brown eyes danced and I no longer felt so shy.

“Yes, ah can help, ah can pick out de weeds,” I said, my excitement building.

Then he turned back to my grandmother. “Ah can uproot some of those bird-of-paradise plants. Dem want to tek charge of de garden,” he said, smiling.

Mama sent me inside to get him a glass of ice water.

“Start tomorrow den,” Mama said when I returned with the water. Then she added, “Some garden tools round de back. Yuh can look at dem. Mi son use to help mi wid de gardening, yuh know, but him gone to foreign.”

“Dat nice,” he replied. “Good opportunity. England or America?”

“Canada,” she answered. “Molly, show Myers where de garden shed is.”

I ran ahead of him to the shed. He turned the tools over in his hands as though they were prizes. He felt the point of each to examine its sharpness. He looked around the backyard, took out his measuring tape and wrote some figures on a piece of paper. Then we came back around to join my grandmother on the verandah.

“Everything is dere. Ah will start tomorrow early before de sun come up.” He sat down again and asked me for another glass of water.

“Yuh have a nice backyard, Maria. Ah can get some okra and tomato seeds, callaloo sucker, cho-cho vine, scotch bonnet pepper, green onion and some other provisions to start a vegetable garden in de back.” Mama smiled, encouraged by his enthusiasm.