‘I am all ears Clifton.’
He swallow down a big gulp of rum. ‘It just difficult to know where to begin.’ He take another drink. ‘There was a man, married man, but he couldn’t keep it in his pants. Yu know what I mean? Well, maybe he wasn’t so different from any other Jamaican man or any man in truth. Anyway, he do what he do and go about his business. And two a the women that he do, they sisters. And one sister, she had a son. And the other sister, she have a daughter. But the second sister young. She just a young girl.’
‘Clifton.’
‘Yes, yes I getting there. Patience, Gloria.’ And he drink some more rum and then he hold up the glass and turn to me. ‘Yu think it could do with some water?’
‘Water? Since when you start tek water?’
‘It going to be a while, Gloria, and I just wonder if maybe we should slow things down wid a drop a water or even maybe some ice.’ And just as he say it he get up and walk inside and a few minutes later he come back with the full ice bucket and a water jug. He sit down and start fussing with the glasses, dropping in the ice cubes and pouring water after them.
‘Ice and water Clifton?’
He look down at what he doing. ‘Well, it won’t do no harm.’ And he flick the excess water off his fingers and ease back in the chair with the glass in his hand.
‘Anyway, even though this man do what he do, he nuh like it when he find out his wife seeing another man herself. And, Gloria, what he do is he kill her.’
My heart leap. God knows why. Maybe it was just the thought of somebody killing somebody. Like murder following me everywhere I go.
‘But not just that. He cut her up. Cut her bad. And it was all to do wid her sex, yu know, the cutting. It was cruel and nasty.’ He pause.
‘Yu going tell me who this man is?’
‘It was our father, Gloria.’
‘Our father! Who is the our?’
‘You and me, Gloria. You and me.’
I convinced my ears deceiving me. ‘Yu trying to tell me yu my brother?’
‘Yes, Gloria. And the other man. The one the wife was seeing. That was Barrington Maxwell.’
It was like somebody take a wet rag and slap me in the face because suddenly my body was rigid, suspended in its own space and time completely separate from me, and my thoughts, and my feelings. It was just hanging there in this empty void.
‘Barrington Maxwell?’
‘Yes, and the thing is, Barrington really love this woman. He really love her, Gloria, so he go over to the house and he burn it to the ground even though there was nobody in it because they already haul our father off to jail.’
‘And that was where he die back in ’38?’
‘Yes, he live out the rest of his days in Kingston Penitentiary and he die.’ Clifton take a breath and another drink. ‘What Barrington say was that this man tek everything from him and he was going to tek everything from this man. But it only me . . .’ He pause ‘. . . and maybe you that know what Barrington mean.’
I feel the blood drain outta me. ‘He do it to you as well?’ But Clifton didn’t give me no answer so I say, ‘Yu ever tell anybody?’
‘No, not ’til now. You tell anybody?’
‘I told Mama but she wasn’t interested. She just boil up some herbs and give me to drink and we never mention it again.’
‘Yu think maybe she thought Barrington already seen enough trouble she didn’t want to mek no more for him?’
‘Yu think? I don’t know what she thought.’
It quiet between us while the crickets was clicking and the sound of next door’s lawn sprinkler was coming to us over the hedge. But my mind was not still. It was busy with memories of Barrington. Barrington and me. And Marcia. And how I never asked her anything ’bout her and Loretta and how maybe that was the emptiness that lay there between us, why all that time she didn’t invite me to Miami even though she had Sybil and Beryl staying up there with them.
And then suddenly I just say, ‘Yu think that was what mek you the way you are?’ And right afterwards I realise we brush over the bit where he tell me he is my brother so I say, ‘Yu me bredda, Clifton?’
He turn to me and smile. ‘Yah man. I been trying to tell yu for a good while.’ And then he get up out the chair and come over and ease me to my feet and hug me. A big, warm bear of a hug that a older bredda would give to a younger sista. It felt reassuring. Like I wasn’t alone in the world no more. But in truth, that feeling been with me a long time. Like there was a bond between us. An easiness. An acceptance. And him coming to the house and taking out Auntie and Esther when I was in Cuba. And how Auntie treat him. And Esther taking it on herself to call him uncle. It was all there except I couldn’t see it. So maybe when he tell me it wasn’t a surprise. It was more like him confirming something I already knew.
He ease back and while we standing there in the dark of night he say, ‘That is why Auntie send for me.’
I step back and look at him.
‘She send message to me in Montego Bay that the police was after yu and I had to come to Kingston to see to it. That is how come I dig up the query from the constables and wangle the transfer to get here.’
I can’t say nothing to him so he carry on. ‘She know everything, yu know, Auntie.’
‘Why she nuh tell me herself??’
‘I should know that, Gloria?’ He pause. ‘That is like asking me why people nuh tell their secrets. Because it their secret I suppose.’ He pause again. ‘Maybe she was waiting for the right time and she reckon this is it but she not got the strength right now.’ And then he sit down and pick up the glass.
‘The thing I don’t understand, Gloria, is what yu was doing up there.’
‘Up where?’
‘Up Barrington’s shack the day you and Marcia beat his head in.’
I could barely breathe so I didn’t say nothing even though I knew he was waiting for something to come from me.
Then I say, ‘Why yu think he try do it to Marcia?’
‘Gloria, how am I going to know that? Maybe he mistake her for you.’
I sit there a while and then I get up and go inside to put on some light on the veranda.
When I come back I say, ‘Yu think what Barrington do to yu is what make yu the way yu are?’
Clifton take his hand and rub his face. His forehead and eyes and nose and cheeks and mouth and chin. He do it over and over. And then he sigh. A deep, heavy, slow sigh.
‘In a way, but maybe not the way yu expect.’
‘What yu mean?’
He stop and breathe. ‘He used to wait for me outside the school gate and tell me to come wid him. Not every day just every now and again. And because I never tell a soul what was going on nobody was paying it any mind. But anyway, I would go wid him to the shack. I would go. And he would do what he do. And afterwards, I would walk home. And after a while it didn’t seem so bad. Sometimes I even used to stay afterwards and help him with making and stacking the coal. But the thing about it, Gloria, what it was about, was power. The power a grown man has over a child. A child that was brought up to believe that adults were always right and had to be respected and yu had to do what they tell yu.’ He stop and empty his glass and take a refill, ice and water included. And then he shake off his hand like he do before so the excess water from the ice fall in droplets on to the tile floor.
‘And later, when I try do it wid a woman I found out that I could do it physically, but it didn’t feel good. And what it was about was the power. It felt like the same power Barrington had over me. Because yu know, Gloria, in this world the power a man got over a woman is backed up by a whole system and culture that say he is more important and more valuable than her, and his needs and wants got to be met before hers, and she got to serve him and sacrifice for him, and do what he say and keep him happy. He got to have the better cut a meat and the last drop a milk while she settle for the scraps and water. What it say is, she don’t really matter. And that apply to every man, the nice home-loving family man as much as the scrawniest, laziest, nastiest, imbecile of a man. The system is there for him. And when yu see that for what it is, it is hard, Gloria, to believe that any woman in her right mind would really want to give herself up, give up her body and her heart to something so personal knowing how uneven and unfair that relationship is. Give herself up of her own free will.’ He stop and take another sip. ‘And when yu a policeman believe me, Gloria, yu see too much of what a man’s acceptance of his position can lead to. It is ugly. It is disgraceful. And, Gloria, it all part of the same shameful thing. The meat and the milk, and the beating and rape and murder. Not just from the nasty ones, but from men yu would think was a nice guy as well.’
I sit there in silent disbelief because I never hear a man talk like this before. It never even dawn on me that any man would give a second thought to what is going on or even care about it.
‘It took me a long time to come to where I am now. And in the past there was things I did that I regret. Things wid men younger than me. That was a part of my troubled mind and for my conscience. But there is one thing I know, if I was a woman, under these conditions, I wouldn’t want to do that wid any man.’
‘Yu a rare man, Clifton Brown.’
‘No. Most men know the truth a the situation. They just playing ignorant because it suit them. It comfortable. After all, would you want to give up that kinda power?’ He wait a minute. ‘And even if yu the kinda man to tek issue wid it how yu going do that without bringing down the wrath a the whole world on yu head? And that not just other men we talking ’bout. It women too because some find the arrangement comfortable as well. It like everybody know their place and just carry on dancing that same dance over and over. It agreed. It easy. It familiar. And it comforting to know that yu in step wid everybody else. There is safety in that. That is what they convince themself of anyway. They reckon it better to be unhappy than risk the hatred of everybody ’round yu.’
He smile. ‘Cho, I sure I not telling yu nothing yu didn’t know already. I reckon every woman know it, in her heart, even if she don’t let it play on her mind because after all she got to get on wid life the way she find it.’
We sit there and let the silence rest between us.
‘It a dangerous thing yu do though Clifton, in a place like this.’
He nod his head. ‘Life is dangerous, Gloria, and me being the way I am is only one part of it. Yu wouldn’t believe the kind a nonsense I have to put up wid being a policeman. Honest to God. Especially wid all the trouble and antics that going on out there right now.’
Esther step out on to the veranda to ask us if we want anything and we say no. She say she going to bed for an early night and so she can carry on reading her book. And then she walk back inside.
Clifton pour himself another drink and come ’cross and top up my glass. When he sit back down he say, ‘I been chatting all this long while telling yu everything from A to Z but I notice there was two things we ease over that yu never say nothing ’bout.’
‘What that?’
‘First, what yu think ’bout our father and what he done. And second, what yu was doing up Barrington’s shack that day.’
I rest my finger over my lips a while before I drop my hand to the glass and take a drink.
‘I don’t know Clifton. I don’t know what I think. I spend such a long time meking up the worst stories I could imagine about him and what yu tell me just seem like another one of them. It don’t seem real. And even though I tell Esther how important it is to know your roots, right now it don’t seem to matter except for explaining why it is I turn out so bad.’
‘Yu not bad, Gloria! Is that what yu think? Yu didn’t do nothing but do Barrington a favour. Yu put the man outta his misery. That is what yu do.’
‘Is that yu policeman verdict?’
‘What yu think?’
‘I don’t know what I think. That is what I just say to yu. How I feel? Empty.’ And in truth who my father was is something I stop wondering about a long time back because it didn’t seem to have any bearing on anything. Not any more.
‘And yu not going tell me ’bout the shack that day?’
‘That, Clifton, as Auntie say to me, is for another time.’
But what I never say to him was that when I talk about me being bad it had nothing to do with killing Barrington Maxwell.
The next time I visit Auntie I say to her that Clifton and me had our chat and he tell me everything. And she nod her head and just say, ‘Good.’
‘I know now why yu say all them things to me when we at Back-O-Wall. I understand that yu was just trying to warn me and protect me from the troubles a young woman can find if she go mix up with some man.’
‘It not no excuse, Gloria.’ And then she take my hand in both of hers and say, ‘I know I treat yu bad when yu first come to Kingston and I am sorry. I get myself into a rut wid yu and I didn’t know how to get outta it. I only hope dat these past years in Franklyn Town and me coming to be wid you and Esther go some way to mek up fah it.’ And then she look me straight in the eye and say, ‘Can yu forgive me?’
‘There not nothing to forgive Auntie. I know yu was only talking to me from outta yu own sorrow. And anyway, it me that should be thanking you. For sending for Clifton.’ And she just squeeze my hand.
I ask her again if she don’t want to come home.