—You can’t drive and feel up girl at the same time. You going to House Arrest 2? Ambassador Disco spinning.
—All I get at House Arrest 1 was feel up.
—Buy you own drinks and stop take drinks from boys, that is the lesson deh so.
—Anyway, they change the venue from Tavistock Terrace to Morgan’s Harbour.
—We going to Miami next week. I got Daddy to buy tickets to go see Whitney Houston.
I’m every woman, it’s all in meeeeeeee
.
—Me hungry. Anybody see Irie Bruce?
—Maybe the Sisters drive him away again.
—But me hungry.
—Gal, everybody know you going vomit it up before lunch break, so this way you stomach already empty.
—Shut you shit, gal.
—Wait, wait. Volvo. Shelly Jordan driving up.
—But Shelly take the bus.
—Not on a Friday, fool.
—Is near eight o’clock, wipe that lipstick off.
—Is not me using shoe polish in me eyebrow.
—Is not me put on maxipad the wrong way and have to go to nurse.
—Look. Is who that?
—Look like Jacqueline Stenton friend. You know, Miss Goody-Goody, Melissa Leo.
—Which part o’ she good if she run with Jacqueline? She only going on like …
—Why she running like that?
—Long way from downtown m’love.
—No, Kenisha, you can see anything? Open the gate wider!
—Is him. Is him. Him driving beside her.
—Car horn honking all the way down the street
—Him don’t care.
—Last week him tell me that my pussy look like it would need two finger. Like me fraid of boy that drive car. So me just play like them dumb girl that boy like and say,
But how you mean?
—
What-what-what-what? How me mean? Did I utter, mutter, or stutter
…
—Jesus Christ, Kenisha, you say it just like him. Mind me get goose pimple at the gate.
—Come inna me car now and deal with me buddy,
Did I utter, mutter, or stutter
…
—My gal, then you hear say the other day Sister Mary Agatha had to come out and tell him to drive off the premises after the nasty rass park him red car in front of the grade ten for one whole hour.
—Yeah, but is a Saab though.
—Listen to me, if I don’t drape up that boy by him little balls one day my name is not Alicia Mowatt. Watch him, rolling down on Goody-Goody like him is cat and she is mouse. Little stumpy fat boy think him is man because him drive a car with a name him can’t even spell. Speaking of Goody-Goody, where is the Jeckle to her Heckle? Anybody see Jacqueline from morning?
—Not since Tuesday.
—She sick again? I have words to give that damn girl.
Why you don’t tell him to leave me alone? No, it not funny, people at school seeing him taking step with me like me is something to him.
2
This is when they found her: Monday morning, October 25, 1993. This is where they found her: South Parade, below St. William Grant Park in downtown Kingston, a place where morning roosters crowed like it was country, giving the wake-up call for madmen and whores to shuffle away and the starting signal for higglers to cart their fruit, vegetables, and chingum to the nearby market grounds, where minibuses ran a ring around the collar of the old colonial square, and Syrian haberdasheries stayed closed until nine.
This is how they found her. Faceup, legs wide in a death swing to spread-eagle. White skirt up, salmon panties down on one leg, pubic hair pulled up and roughed up. Under a minibus that had not parked there overnight.
The driver, dumpling fat and squeezing into a Michael Jackson
Dangerous
tour T-shirt shouted to the police that him don’t know how dead gal get under the bus. At first people thought he was lying, that he mowed her down and did not stop, not knowing the bus was dragging her along like road kill.
But she was lying beside a patterned burgundy rug as if she was rolled out of it, one hand slung cross her chest, and her school uniform was clean, immaculate like the name of her school.
Her straightened hair was parted in two, but strands had slipped out of the loosened plaits. Some hair stuck to her face, heart-shaped with wild brows, a line below her forehead. Her lips, smudged with lipstick, were parted as if to kiss, and she stared at the sky, the whites of her eyes now light blue. Maybe somebody beat her, a higgler said. You think them rape her? What schoolgirl doing out so early by herself? School don’t start till eight.
This is what the police took down for a statement:
Date: Monday, October 25, 1993, 8:45 a.m. Victim, a schoolgirl from Immaculate Conception High School, was discovered under Number 35 minibus, licence plate PP 0898. Aforementioned vehicle arrived into South Parade, in the vicinity of downtown Kingston, at 5:45 a.m. Witnesses who claim to have been in South Parade from 5:00 a.m. remember little to moderate traffic. No evidence of crime having been commited or perpetrators on the scene. Witnesses claim that terminus was clear and empty before the bus came. Nobody saw a body. At some time between the bus coming to the terminus and the bus driving off, somebody killed the high school girl and put her dead body under the bus without managing to be witnessed. There also may be evidence of unlawful carnal knowledge.
Here are seven (7) things the police did not know about Janet Stenton:
1. Under her fingernails is one man. Sprinkled and spattered between her legs are more.
2. Periwinkle is not her favorite color, but she wore periwinkle panties every Thursday she left home early, four in the morning for school at eight o’clock.
3. When she left her mother’s house in Trench Town, and walked two miles to a bus stop where nobody would recognize her, it was on a Wednesday morning, not Thursday.
4. Her favorite TV show was
MacGyver
. She had watched
MacGyver
every Thursday morning on videotape for the past three weeks. The school had a note signed by her mother asking that her daughter be excused from the first three hours of school for the next five Thursdays to take her aunt to the clinic for her dialysis treatment. Dialysis was not her idea.5. She had already broken her hymen with two fingers.
6. Her chest smelled of Jergens talcum powder and her vagina smelled like a clean floor.
7. The panties on her left leg were not hers.
This is what Alicia Mowatt, student fifteen years old of Immaculate Conception High School, said while squeezing a ball from the nine-hole course next door after a few minutes of listening to a nun telling her class of Jacqueline Stenton’s horrible tragedy that same morning:
—What, you sure is she? Downtown? But she not supposed to be downtown. I mean, she don’t go to school downtown.
Alicia thought of flinging the ball at Sister Rose Maria just to get her to shut the bullshit about praying to God for discernment in this matter. She was no friend of Jacqueline Stenton. Damn girl acted too innocent, when she most certainly was not—
that
she found out only a few days ago. This was the damn Sisters’ fault, leaving him there to just park his red Saab outside the grade twelve block and watch the girls.
—Fucking monster.
—Alicia Mowatt! No Immaculate student should ever speak in such a manner, no matter the occasion! Oh Mary, mother of God! Intercede blessed Virgin. Show us the true meaning of the heavenly Father, show us the meaning.
Alicia hissed. But then she looked around and saw that another girl was missing and went outside. Fifty feet away, clutching her backpack instead of wearing it, and walking fast, was Melissa Leo.
—Goody-Goody Leo! Where the fuck you think you going?
—Alicia Mowatt, don’t bother with me this morning. Don’t bother with me.
—Where you going?
—Don’t bother with me.
—Where you going?
—You know where me going. Me going home. You uptown people can go to—
—You think is him. Not even him could—
Melissa Leo stopped.
—I don’t know what you talking bout, she said.
—I saw her. I know where she was going.
—Go bout your business, Alicia Mowatt.
—You know where she was going too.
—I say I don’t know what you bloodclaat talking bout.
—You girls come up from Cross Roads like you know how uptown run. If you knew how uptown run, you would know who run it.
—You can keep your bloodclaat uptown then. Me gone.
I tell you a secret. Is not Jacqueline alone I name. I hate the name Janet, you see.
This is what Ruth Stenton was wearing when the crew from JBC TV came to her house at twelve noon, thirty-five minutes after the police had left: a pink halter top and a plaid tennis skirt.
The crew got to her house in Trench Town, a city ghetto six miles west of where the body was found, having just left Immaculate Conception High School where in asking for reactions from the girls, the girls first learned that Jacqueline Stenton was murdered. Ruth was outside her house—blue, yellow, and small with a rusty zinc roof and packed tight beside the others flanking it. The reporter had stepped through the picket fence gate, pausing when she thought of dogs.
—Me don’t believe no police. No sah, not me daughter. After them never show me no picture. Them say me have to come identify the girl, but me nah go nowhere fi go look pon dead body. And now TV camera in me house. You couldn’t make me fix up the whatnot and breakfront little bit? Is just like she fi do this. Damn gal probably in some house somewhere a laugh bout how so many people a talk bout her. What a damn gal love when people take notice. Her father she get it from. After she, me just say no more pickney.
—Ma’am, the police are saying—
—Oi, camera man, you can see me from this side? Under the tree no have too much shadow? Are we on the air?
—It’s not live, Miss Stenton.
—Wah? Then me can go put on me other outfit?
—Ma’am, what do you remember most about your daughter Jacqueline?
—Who?
—Jacqueline?
—Me daughter don’t name no Jacqueline. She name Janet. Same thing me tell the damn police, that me daughter don’t name no Jacqueline. Is who playing poppy show with me?
—Ma’am, are you saying this is not your daughter?
The reporter whipped out a photo she stole from the police headquarters. Ruth Stenton fainted.
This is how Grace McDonald made morning coffee. She scooped one more teaspoon than usual into the filter and set it in the coffeemaker. She waited, hummed with the machine, and turned on the TV.
Outside, if she looked hard enough, beyond her secondfloor balcony, beyond the trees in the front yard that made her town home look like country to the road, rush hour traffic was already starting up. Across the road was a wedding center that played Celine Dion all the time, especially Saturday nights, making her cringe. That was it, fucking Celine Dion. At work, the nurse would play her at the reception desk, even the hardcore sky juice vendor with his cart by the hospital gate would be humming that shit song from
Beauty and the Beast
.
On the morning news, in between Miss Jamaica heading off to Miss World and the rise in gas prices at the pump, was a breaking story about a dead girl from Immaculate Conception High School found at South Parade underneath a bus. Name withheld until the family had been contacted.
What Grace really wanted was a cigarette, cancer in the titty could kiss her rass if it ever showed up. She thought about combing her hair, making herself nice for the man who was going to show up like
poof!
as her mother liked to say. Her mother also said her black nail polish made her look like a lesbian.
Nothing wrong with jeans, even if the button was getting harder to button, she thought. And she had on an honest-togoodness floral top this morning, the tip of the neck was even lace. Thank God her lab coat would hide the rest of it, for she already felt like an idiot.
She did agree with her mother to wear lipstick, though, just because of how her mother talked about it like it was the new thing, the lick. Isn’t that what you young people say? The lick?
Dead girl arranged on a blanket underneath a bus in broad daylight. Maybe this going be the lick now in this goddamn place. Pretty but so scrupulously violent. When she was in med school at Georgetown she used to joke with her friends that if they really wanted to be trauma surgeons they should do their internship in Kingston, at Dutty Public—the (un)popular name for Kingston Public Hopsital.
The phone rang. It was the director of public prosecutions, Michael “Barracuda” Barracat.
—McDonald, you see this business on the news?
—What business, Mr. Barracat?
—Come, girl, I’m in the middle of bush and hear about it before you?
—Sir?
—The Immaculate girl. My own mother just called me about it. Damn woman bawl so much she almost short circuit her phone. Ole girl went to Immaculate too, you know. Pull!
—Sir?
—Shit.
—Excuse me, sir, I don’t get—
—One second, McDonald … How you mean,
Busha
? Your eyes in the back of your head or the front of your backside? You totally launch that at the wrong angle, you damn ass … Then
you
go and find it while I shoot the next one … Pull! Ha … yes … McDonald. Sorry about that. Some people think they can cheat at clay pigeon just because they name Sanguinetti.
—Are we back now?
—Yes. Sorry. So, my girl …
—You talking to me?
—Yes, McDonald, back to you. I swear these new mobile phones are nothing but grief. Try holding one with your shoulder and shooting. Impossible. Simply impossible. Don’t get one, McDonald. Anyway, I need you to work on that girl today, you hear me? I already getting calls out here that this case need to move fast. Very fast. What nasty business, eh? Murdering an Immaculate girl. Almost make me wish it was Merl Grove girl, but that’s a terrible thing to say, don’t it? What school you went to, by the way?
—Wolmer’s.
—Good enough. I hope to Jesus she’s not from uptown. Otherwise this thing could get sticky.
You make me pack big bag and leave my mother house. Stop calling me little girl.