‘What would she go to England for?’
‘It seem she got a brother there.’
I know. Henry already tell me. But I don’t say nothing.
‘It serious, Miss Gloria. Believe me, serious.’
Then I remember what Fay say to me about changing her life and I say to him, ‘Yu think she going try tek the children wid her?’
A couple months later when Clifton gone to Miami to see if the waitress all right that is exactly what Fay do. She jump on a BOAC jet to England and she take Mui and Xiuquan with her. And after Pao scream murdering vengeance on every man and woman that help her and say he going to England to get them back, ’til Clifton and Finley talk him out of it, he open a bottle of Appleton and not put down the glass yet.
When Clifton come tell me I already know something had happened. So I just ask him how she do it.
‘The two constables that Yang Pao vex after they arrest Xiuquan and have to let him go, the ones he call Mutt and Jeff, they do it.’
‘How Fay know about Mutt and Jeff??’
‘God knows. The thing is the children gone and that is that. And even though Pao so drunk he don’t know what day a the week it is Hampton and his friend go find the constables and give them a hiding anyway. So they pay for it.’
‘They hurt bad?’
‘No, Gloria. It was just a little slapping. They off work right now but they will be back in that station in no time. And if they know what is good for them they will carry on like nothing happen because they know they had it coming.’
I just wait out the weeks with Finley coming at regular intervals to tell me that Pao not doing no better. All he do is empty the bottle and walk to Barry Street for the next one because nobody in the house prepared to go fetch it for him. Esther, she can see that something going on so she ask me and I tell her.
She stand there in the kitchen and look at me and then she say, ‘You think he can get them back?’
‘No. That not going to happen now. They gone until such time as they old enough and want to come back themselves.’
And for the first time in her life Esther seem like she have some sympathy for him.
‘So am I the only child he has now?’
‘The only child he has in Jamaica. The only one that he can see whenever he want to and talk to and pass the time of day with.’
‘You think he would want to do that with me now?’
The thing on the tip of my tongue is to say, ‘Esther, he loves you. He just don’t know how to show it that is all.’ But I don’t say it.
Instead I say, ‘You would like that? After everything that go on all these years?’
‘He is my father.’
‘Yes, he is.’
She sit down on the stool like she settling in for a talk she been waiting to have for a long time. Then she say, ‘How do you know he loves you?’
I think on it and then I say, ‘Because his caring is constant. For twenty-one long years. Through thick and thin. He is always there.’
I can see she turning it over in her mind. ‘I don’t think he is a bad man you know.’
‘No?’
‘Father Michael says we are all troubled. And every person has to deal with life as they find it. Whatever circumstances they meet. We have to decide at each and every turn what is the right or best thing to do. That we struggle and sometimes we make mistakes.’
‘And then what?’
‘We try again.’
‘We get another chance?’
‘Yes, because all of us suffer. If we didn’t suffer we wouldn’t do the things we do. So we deserve kindness and compassion.’
‘Someone said to me once that nothing is perfect, we have to work at it. But we have to work at it with a forgiving heart.’
She get up from the stool and walk over to me and put her arms ’round me. And after she hold me like that for a good long while she ease back and look me in the eye and say, ‘You are my forgiving heart.’
So after that I decide one day to take her to Margaret’s with me. She old enough now to understand the tragic predicament these girls are in. When she get there she stand in the doorway silent, hanging on to the doorpost like her life depended on it.
So I say, ‘Come on Esther, yu can help these girls with their reading, writing and arithmetic.’ And I turn to the girls sitting there in the yard and say, ‘This is Esther, my daughter. She has come to help.’ And just the same way they put their hands together and clap the first time I go there, they do it again, which bring a smile to Esther’s lips and unfreeze her.
Hyacinth still here. Almost grown. But even though she is a really good girl Margaret can’t find no family for her. So she in the house earning her keep and a little wage and taking Esther under her wing. Showing her what to do and how to do it. And chat, bwoy can they chat. So much so I have to separate them once in a while so they can get their chores done.
Margaret happy because she think Esther got a calling. Me, I am just relieved to see her taking an interest in something other than a magazine ’bout US movie stars. And quite an interest it was too, because Esther was going there every time she get a spare minute, even on her own, to help Margaret and see Hyacinth.
When I ask her what she like so much ’bout the place she say, ‘It’s giving people a second chance.’
But I know it more than that, because for the first time it seem Esther actually have a friend. So I tell her she can have Hyacinth come over the house if she want to and it put the biggest smile on her face I ever did see.
When Pao finally turn up it was early evening almost two months after the children gone to England. I just open the door and take him in my arms and hold him.
‘I wonder how long it was going to be before you come.’
I walk with him inside and start to boil the kettle.
‘You not got no Appleton?’
‘From what Finley tell me yu already had plenty enough of that. I fixing us some nice Lipton’s.’ Right then Esther come into the kitchen. She stand there and look at him like she thinking what it is she want to say, like it matter to her to say something soothing. And then she say, ‘I’m sorry to hear about what happen.’ She take one more look at him and then she step through the back door into the yard.
After I make the tea I settle us down in the living room while he tell me how since the children leave he feel like somebody reach inside his chest and pull out his heart. And how spending time with Father Michael made him feel like he was connected to Fay. And how he really wanted to make a family with her but now she and children gone.
And then he turn towards me and lean into my arms and cry with the full weight of his body against me. Such sobbing I never thought a man could produce. It was that same sound of despair that come out of Marcia after the business with the sailor. That same pain I emptied into my pillow the night he told me about marrying Fay. That was the depth of the sorrow in him, as his body was heaving and the sweat was creeping through his shirt.
And as I was sitting there holding him and listening and letting my heart go out to him I realise that this is what Fay meant in the postcard she mail to me from the airport. A regular tourist postcard, with a picture of the Jamaican flag and Dunn’s River Falls and a sunset on Negril beach. And on the back of which she had written, ‘Look after him. You were always more of a wife to him than I ever was
.
’
But I wasn’t thinking so much about being a wife. I was thinking about devotion and how despite all the searching I did in my head and heart about what I really meant to him, for Pao I was never his three-times-a-week whore. I was always more than that, from that very first night. More than a convenience or recreational activity, more than a respite from Matthews Lane. And for me he was always and would always be there. Because with Pao neither of us had anything to forgive ourselves or each other for. We were authentic and that is the most honest thing a person can be.
In all the years we spend in Kingston, we never go back to Petersfield because after all what was there apart from bad memories and a heap of people asking questions we didn’t want to answer. But now Marcia tell me that Mama sick, serious, and the only decent thing to do is to get ourselves on that country bus for the trip back. But Clifton say no, he will drive us.
‘What on earth you want to go over there for Clifton? What is there for you that is anything worth having?’
‘It almost thirty years since you and me been there, Gloria, and at the time you was leaving and I was coming both over the same reason. And for both of us too it is a home full a pain and sorrow. Yu nuh think it should be something we do together?’
Auntie think it a good idea as well for Clifton to go but she say I should leave Esther with her because she fourteen now and studying hard with her heart set on university so this not the time for me to be taking her outta school to go gallivanting to country.
‘Anyway,’ she say, ‘who knows what gwaan over deh, so feel before yu mount an remember long look cyan buy talk. If people want to keep their secret deh will do it. But nuh fret yuself. Everything get sorted out in it own time. Time longer than rope.’
So we take the same road, me, Marcia and Clifton in this new black Chevy Impala that he driving with a bench seat of red leather in the front so all three of us can fit in. A car that he say been shaped like a Coke bottle, which I for one can’t see but it seem to please him.
We go through Spanish Town and May Pen and ’cross the mountain to Mandeville and drop down into Black River and along the coast to Savanna-la-Mar. And all the time we travelling I can’t get over how everything the same. Exactly as it was thirty years back when me and Marcia do this trip on the bus that tip and turn and swirl and almost fall down ’round every corner. The wild bush and little hamlets where the washing lines is hanging between the breadfruit and mango tree, the multicoloured rickety wooden shacks that wouldn’t stand a gust of wind never mind a hurricane, the higgler on the roadside with a row of conk shells and three wet fish, the music blasting out of every meagre shop and bar that got electricity. It was all exactly the same, everything apart from the electricity.
So finally we get up to Petersfield and the little town just outside that was our home. The place we were all in such a hurry to leave and would never have come back if it wasn’t for the sense of duty that bring us here.
When we arrive at the house it look just like it did the last time I see it. Same wooden house with the apex roof and three steps up on to the boarded veranda with the railing and everything else that need painting and the scaly door that still wedge wide to let some breeze pass through. And the yard with the banana and breadfruit and mango trees. And the dry, dusty, red earth that used to blow everywhere on a windy day.
And inside, it dark and closed in like it always was, with the air hanging heavy even though every window in the place jam open with a piece of stick trying to let some life in.
Babs happy to see us and open her arms wide so she can hug me and Marcia both at the same time. And then she kiss us and examine us, one at a time, to make sure we are truly the sisters that the good Lord has delivered to her safe and sound because, Marcia tell me, Babs got religion bad. Then she say she going make some coffee we can drink on the veranda and we say good as we walk into the bedroom where Mama laying in the old iron bed that me, Marcia and Babs used to share when we young.
When I see her I startled. I can’t believe how grey and frail she get even though I reckon she must be a good age by now. But how old? I don’t know because that subject was never a topic of conversation Mama ever wanted to have. And as for birthdays, she never had nothing to do with that neither.
She open her eyes when she hear our footsteps and raise her arm over the thin grey sheet as if to say come here, come closer. I draw up a chair next to the bed and Marcia cotch herself at the foot.
‘It so good to see yu. I was wondering if yu would find time to mek the journey.’
Her voice so weak it was a miracle we manage to hear at all what she have to say. So just to soothe her, I take her hand in mine and I say, ‘Yu should be resting yuself Mama.’
She nod her head, and then she raise her other arm and make for Marcia to come take her hand. So Marcia move ’round the bed and do it, which spread Mama’s wings like she was some archangel in her nightgown passing among her flock.
‘You girls turn into some fine women, who go to town and mek a living and come back here in glory. A good living at that. Yes sir. Wearing fine frocks and driving a beautiful automobile that park there outside dis window.’
‘That not our car Mama. It belong to our friend that drive us here.’
‘Yu friend bring yu?’
‘Yes, he from ’round these parts himself. He called Clifton.’
‘Yu mean Clifton Brown that little scallywag that used to plague Mr Chen chicken morning, noon and night?’
‘Yu know him?’
‘Me know him? He was a rascal that is what he was. And if he nuh join di police force he would a been doing business for di other side that is for sure. Tell him to come in here and let me tek a look at him.’
So I shout Clifton and the next minute he was standing there in the doorway.