The Polished Hoe (9 page)

“But going back to Wilberforce and his memories of flying over the Dollarmites and the Alps, and how it reminded him of Churchill’s code . . . that boy applies Churchill’s codes to
every
part of life, even to his own practice in Tropical Medicines . . . by having tools that are always sharp and sharpened, instruments and surgeons’ scalpels. If Wilberforce happen to be cutting-open a person’s stomach, in search for the groins, or the pennicitis, or the liver, my God, and the implements are not sharp . . . and you happen to be the patient on that cot . . . my God! And you are at Wilberforce mercy! Yes! But Wilberforce believe in the right tools, as a man who needs them for his use, to cut-open living persons with . . .

“But he won’t use them on me! Wilberforce will never cut-open me! Not me! And he is my son! You think I would let Wilberforce come near to me, with one of his scalpels?

“And all these years, I suffer silently, and in pain, from pennicitis? Still, do you think I would grant Wilberforce the right to come-near me, with a knife in his hand? No!

“And you know Wilberforce is one of the best surgeons in Bimshire! . . .

“. . . but the code about tools applies to everyday life. Yes.

“Still, my question to myself is
‘Why?’
Why-though, was I polishing the handle and sharpening the blade of my hoe, all those evenings, after I wash my face-and-hands? What is the reason and motivation?

“Ma used to call me a crazy girl, along with saying I am a dreamer, when I was small.

“Yes!
Be prepared.
As they learned me in the Girl Guides, teaching me preparedness concerning the tools I worked with.

“If it wasn’t so dark outside, I would ask you to look out that window, and let your eyes travel to the shed, near the stables now turned into a cottage . . . the shed is made outta coral stone . . . but the shed was originally an oven. We used to bake cassava bread in it. It is a relic from the slave days . . . you would see the hoe in question.

“No! I don’t think it is there. The hoe is not there. I didn’t put it back, I don’t think, when I returned from the Main House. And, my God, I can’t call-to-mind where I put it. The memory going, Constable. The mind slipping. But it got to be in this House, on this property,
somewhere.
The hoe is here. My hoe. Tonight, after I returned inside-here from the Main House, I realize tonight is the very first time, in all the years I inherited it from Ma, that my hoe hasn’t slept within my reach.

“When I was carrying Wilberforce, after I lost his brother, William Henry, and his sister, Rachelle Sarah Prudence, soon after they born; after I start cohorting with Mr. Bellfeels . . . and God, you have to pardon me for that mistake . . . but life is life, and full of
ironies
. . . years and years afterwards; after cohorting, and I allowed Mr. Bellfeels to do what he wished with me, it suddenly hit me that I needed something to preoccupy myself with. Wilberforce was growing-away from me. Will married and move-out, someday. The crocheting was making my two eyes burn, and my eyesight bad. And three months ago, almost to the day, I took the hoe from its resting place under my bed, and start sharpening and polishing it. Sharpening and polishing in preparation for the right use to put my hoe to.

“So, I slept with my hoe. Underneat my four-poster bed with the Simmons mattress. And before I moved into this Great House, I slept with it, wherever my bed was, in whichever place I lay my head.

“I had an obsession about that hoe. And a identical one with the wishbone. That wishbone went with me wherever I went. I could hide it anywhere. But my hoe was too big to conceal. Still . . .

“The afternoon that I asked Mr. Waldrond for the oil and the stain, when he told me how strange it was for me, a woman, to be interested in his profession, as if I was invading his sacred territory, it made me think of the place of woman in this Island. That thought hit me, hard-hard. It made me see that in this Village, now and in bygone days, and in Ma’s time, women were relegated.

“Women were allowed to be schoolteachers sometimes. A few that you could count on one hand made it to headmistress. A few more became nurses in the Bimshire General Hospital. But the vast-majority spent their lives as field hands, maids, cooks and nursemaids. The enterprising few was the group that left and went Away, overseas to Amurca, Englund and the Panama Canal Zone. Some who got their hands on Amurcan magazines, from places like the South and Brooklyn, start looking in those magazines at Technicolor pictures of coloured women, these women tried their hands in a follow-pattern way, at imitating black Amurcan women, at fixing hairdos, at hairdressing; and needlework. The most ambitious put up shingles and announce themselves as SEAMSTRESS WITHIN.

“Basically, not much more were women allowed to do, in this Island.

“We never had the education that women in Amurca—not counting-in the South!—and other parts of the outside-world were allowed to cumulate from book-learning and practical experience; and encouragement.

“But we were women who understood things; and we learned by listening and observing. So, even though I never had the education that could explain to me the reason and the motivation for polishing the handle of the hoe, and sharpening its blade, I knew that I had to keep-on doing it. And Be Prepared, religiously night after night, as the Girl Guides’ motto says.

“I became overprepared. But I did not know who I was going to test the keenness of my preparation on. And while we’re waiting on Sargeant to come, I cannot tell you that I knew what my real intention was, neither.

“There is a time when your past takes over you, and takes over your present; and if you stand and remain passive as Ma was in the Church Yard, that Sunday afternoon . . . when she stood there as if she had a sunstroke that rendered her parlyzed in speech; and all she could do was to watch how Mr. Bellfeels passed his riding-crop slow-slow, slow, over my body, as if he was telling Ma to her face,
Old woman, look, I don’t need your wrinkle-up body no more. I have Mary-girl, this young, sweet delicious piece o’ veal, to feast on, at my heart’s delight.

“That was done in times when a woman, with no education to speak of, didn’t know the term ‘feminine-suffrages.’ We knew we were feminine-minded-women, though. That was driven into us, by instinct . . .

“There was no feminine-suffrages in my time, Constable. But we still knew what was happening to us, in this Island. As women, we didn’t comport ourselves with the talk of English suffrageswomen. But that voice was buried inside our hearts. And although we could not, dare not, shout-out a dirty word in Mr. Bellfeels face, or pick up a rock-stone and pelt it at Mr. Bellfeels, and break his arse . . . pardon my French! . . . and watch his head burst-open like a watermelon, and watch the blood spurt-out like the water from a water coconut, all those thoughts and buried acts, and stifled wishes concealed in our craw, were always near the top, near to erupting. We couldn’t act like this modern generation of darkskin women I see walking-’bout this Village, in dresses of African print; and wearing their hair natural; uncomb. But the plot of defiant words and Africa was already hatching inside our heads. Yes.

“A woman of my generation could not even dare to think of poisoning a man like Mr. Bellfeels, with a few drops of Jays Fluid, put by accident in his gravy. A silent, and secretive poisoning. With a teaspoonful of glass-bottle grind-up fine-fine-fine and sprinkledover his food, to conceal the act against detection.

“But, thank God, there was at least one feminine-suffrages woman living-’bout here.
One
woman, in the whole of Bimshire, with big-enough balls to confront a certain gentleman, who shall remain nameless . . . Yes.

“She poisoned him. A lil grind-up glass-bottle, fine-fine-fine, in appearance no difference from white pepper in a shaker, and just
a little pinch
, and sprinkled it with carefulness on the fresh parsley leaves he loved so much to have on his souse. And
out-goeshim!
. . . God rest his soul . . . Yes.

“But before Ma left this life . . . and may God rest
her
soul, too . . . she said to me,
‘Mary-girl, you must never forget that Sunday afternoon in the Church Yard! And bear witness to how my mouth was stricken. But there is times when it is more better not to open your mouth, than to speak a word.’

“Ma whispered those words, using her dying breath, to utter her last advice.”

The Constable is getting tired.

Miss Mary-Mathilda is standing by the window, looking into the blackness of the night, towards the North Field, unidentifiable from the surrounding darkness of the night.

The Constable tries to recall details of a dream he had last night: Naiman was bringing him and Sargeant sixteen salt fish cakes in a greasy brown paper bag, along with special rum, cured in prunes and raisins and golden apples. He can taste the rum scorching his throat as it goes down . . . But Miss Mary-Mathilda’s voice keeps following a path that is more fixed than his own dream, a path to another kind of life lived in this Village, but which he knew nothing of before tonight. It is a life he could not see from his distance down the hill.

Tonight he has been sitting in a house, inside its cool, large, shuttered doors, on a mahogany tub-chair, offered a drink of milk with chocolate, from a crystal glass. The utensils in his home are all made of tin. The tinsmith rivets a handle onto the empty “tot” that contained condensed milk, imported from Englund. And on other “tots” that once held green pigeon-peas, Canadian pears, Canadian apricots, Canadian plums; and larger ones not round, nor cylindrical, which came with pilchards, salmon and Fray Bentos corn beef, with “Halifax” and “The Argentyne” marked on them, before they got into the hands of the tinsmith. These utensils are the “crystals” of the Villagers.

But his life down the hill was still a life. In his world, he was happy; had been happy even without the acquaintance of this Great House, this other world that was, for him, out of reach socially. Now that he has seen the life Miss Mary-Mathilda lives, even under the circumstances; now that he has entered her world, he can still feel that what beckons him here, in this world shuttered against hurricane and intruder, is not its size and comfort, more and more unenticing; and not better than his existence in the sub-station; nor better than in backyard palings sitting on a rock, eating pudding-and-souse every Saturday afternoon, with the pleading eyes and the hot breath of the neighbourhood’s mongrels focused upon his enamel plate; not better than pounding domino seeds under a sea-grape tree, on Hastings Beach; and not better than just sitting in his one-roomed, one-roofed chattel house, down the hill, through the fruit trees and the royal palms, near the Pasture, near the Rock Quarry, near the Church of the Nazarene, in the Village of Sin-Davids which borders Flagstaff Village, reading detective magazines full of murders lent to him by Sargeant, sent by his daughter Ruby, from Brooklyn.

“. . . and when I left this house, a few hours ago,” she is telling the Constable, “there wasn’t a shaving of a moon in the sky. It bringback two things to me. Number one: as girls, Clotelle, Clotelle’s sister, Cecily, who we called Sis, Gertrude my maid, although slightly younger, and Mr. Brannford’s wife and me, we never played games at night, even beside our house, or in Clotelle’s paling, unless it was a moonlight night. And we girls played with boys, in them days. Golbourne and Sargeant and Pounce and Naiman, before he went-off slightly in the head. The game we played the most was London Bridge.”

And she recites the first verse:

“‘London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down,
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady . . .’

“And after ‘London Bridge,’ the next popular was ‘A Riddle, a Riddle, a Ree.’”

And again, her face transformed by the recollection of her children’s games, and her voice strong but tender and sweet, she recites the first verse of this rhyme:

“‘A riddle, a riddle, a-ree,
No one can solve this riddle but me!
What is long and tough and shiny
And have a smell, and a sharp
Shiny thing at the end, and . . .’”

“A hoe!” the Constable shouts. And immediately is embarrassed that his voice was raised, so he covers his mouth with his left hand to erase the words spoken, to draw them back into his mouth, to apologize for speaking out of turn.

She smiles with him. Her face becomes more beautiful, and youthful; and she is once again the young, frisky, little girl with the falsetto voice, keen as a knife, who laughed the loudest amongst her girlfriends and boyfriends, as they played London Bridge.

“Yes!” she says. Her face is beaming, beautiful and joyous. “A polished hoe.”

“I like riddles bad-bad, ma’am,” the Constable says, and wipes his eyes, and then sits erect.

“That’s a good thing, specially for a policeman doing detective work.

“And the second thing about moonlight nights versus dark nights is a story of a woman who was two-timing her husband. I don’t recall the details in full . . . My mind is not my own, tonight . . .

“Earlier this evening, heading to my destination, I deliberately walked in the middle of the road. Now that Crop-Season in full swing, and the canes cut, the ground animals and other pests are disturbed from their lairs and habitats in the canes, so it could be a lil dangerous to walk too close to the side or gutter, specially near a cane field; and that cautiousness made me walk in the middle of the road.

“Two motor-cars passed me like this. The first was the Vicar, late for Eveningsong-and-Service. He wave. And when he see who the body is,
bram!
he apply the brakes in the middle of the road and back-back the car to greet me.