Pynter Bender (4 page)

‘Lots o' things.'

‘Like what?' She was speaking but her lips were hardly moving.

A small current of uneasiness ran through him. He turned his head away from her, remembering the evening he returned from the river after Tan Cee had taken him there. During dinner, Patty the Pretty had come to sit with him. She'd asked him what had happened down there by the river. He told her, finding that he'd lowered his voice like hers. When he finished she was shaking her head and she wasn't smiling as she did most times.

‘You must never tell your mother about these things, y'unnerstan? You talk to me or Tan Cee, but never your mother, y'hear me?'

He'd asked her why. She seemed to be making up her mind about something, then she touched his arm, ‘Know Miss Maisie?'

He nodded.

‘See that long white mark that run across she face?'

He nodded.

‘Well, one time, when y'all was little baby, Maisie say something to your mother about y'all and Manuel Forsyth. Elena put you an' Peter down by the roadside and went fo' her. It take four people to pull her off. She only had time to do that to her face. Imagine if she had another coupla minutes.'

He looked across at his mother, his voice a plea this time. ‘Let Peter go – I don' like 'im, Na.'

‘You don' like somebody you don' know? Is you he ask for.'

‘Why?'

She looked away.

‘I wan' to stay with Tan.'

‘What you say?'

He felt the change in her. It was as quiet as it was frightening. He jumped to his feet to run. Her hand shot out and closed around his shirt.

‘Siddown!' The voice came from her throat. ‘Lemme teach you something. I'll never have to do this with Peter – but you, you different. I don' know what kind o' child you is. You want to know who's your modder? Well, let me,' she shook him, ‘show you,' she shook him again, ‘who your modder is!'

She was loosening the buttons of her bodice with the other hand. He watched as she lifted the ends of the garment. Still staring into his eyes, she took his hand and placed it on the small bulge on the left side of her stomach. He tried to pull away. She dragged him back.

‘Peter was here fo' eight months an' thirteen days. You,' she pulled his hand over to the other side, ‘you was here a extra two days. This,' she forced his finger along the lines that ran like a faint network of vines around the bulges, ‘is y'all signature. Is de writing dat y'all leave on me. Dis is Peter; dis is you. Me, Elena Bender, I'z your modder. So!' She shook him hard. ‘Don' get renk
with me, y'hear me! I not askin you, I tellin you – next week you goin live with your father.'

She pushed his hand away, got to her feet and went inside.

A couple of mornings every week, when it was still so dark even the chickens beneath the house had not begun to stir, there came the clip-clop-clipping of his father's donkey, the thud of a bag of provisions hitting the ground, then the voice, ‘Elen-ooy!'

Pynter would listen to his mother in the bedroom as she got up, quickly dressed and hurried down the hill to the road.

Pynter would hear the rhythm of the donkey's hooves fading into the distance, following them in his imagination through the sea of plantation canes in the lower valleys of Old Hope, over the Déli Morne River, past the stony wastelands of Salt Fields, where they said the bamboo rose so high their branches swept the sky.

For a long time Pynter had tried to put a face to that voice.

The hands that lifted him onto the back of the donkey were big like Birdie's. A face turned back at him – brown and smooth and hairless, the eyes resting on him almost as a hand would. And then a voice, ‘Is quiet where we going; you sure you want to come?'

He nodded. He liked the smell of the man.

His father's house stood on a ridge that looked down on Old Hope. From there he could see the deep green scoop of the valley winding towards the Kalivini swamps where his grandfather disappeared, and the purple-dark hills that seemed to hold back the sea from spilling over onto the canes and the people who worked in them. His father's house was smaller than his mother's and had no yard to speak of, just the lawn he was not allowed to walk on, which belonged to Miss Maddie – a greying woman whom he'd only caught a glimpse of, and who his father called his daughter.

A window with six glass panes let light into the bedroom. It was the only room with a door that was open to the day.

His father pointed at the back room first – a lightless doorway that stood gaping like a toothless mouth, and from which came a warm and unexpected breath – the odour of musty, nameless things. ‘Don't go in there,' he said, without offering a reason. ‘And leave this place alone,' he added, turning to the living room.

He'd said ‘this place' as if the living room did not belong to the house. It had been abandoned to spiders and dust mites. A mahogany table, on whose surface he drew finger faces and curlicues, stood in the middle of it. The matching chairs were arranged around it strangely, as if the people who had been sitting there had suddenly got up and, without looking back, had left the room for good. Two brownish photographs hung in the gloomiest corner of the room. The smaller one was just the head of a young man, his hair cropped short, staring directly out at them. In the other, a man sat on a beautiful chair with a gaze that was direct and grave. A still-faced woman rested a gloved hand on his arm. Four children, a boy and three girls, were arranged around them like flowers in a vase.

His father gave him their names the moment he stepped through the doorway: Maddie, a sour-faced child, knock-kneed and resentful even then. To the left of her, Eileen – beautiful and dreamy. His father's voice had gone dreamy too. Eileen left the island soon'z she was old enough to travel. Never look back. Pearly was the youngest – too young then to know that she had to sit still to get a proper picture, which was why her face was no more than a smudge.

He left Gideon for last. Gideon was the only boy. ‘Apart from y'all, of course. Gideon build bridges for the government.

‘Gideon fifty next year. Pearly forty-seven. Eileen,' he smiled, ‘she thirty-five next month.'

For a while Pynter felt that the man had forgotten he was there. The bag he'd taken off the donkey was still hanging from his shoulder. His eyes were on the photograph. A stillness had come over his face.

‘Time pass. Time pass too fast, son. Time does pass too fast.' His voice had grown thick and slow. There was a sadness there that made Pynter turn his eyes up at the heavy shape against the backlight of the doorway.

Once, this shape had been no more than a sound. A voice. It used to stop his hands from whatever they were doing. His father's voice – different from the voices of all the men he'd ever heard. And now that he could see him, it was the only voice that fitted the face to which it belonged. A large face, brown like burnt ginger, not smiling, not strict, not young, not old. A face that shifted easily, like shadow over water.

Miss Lizzie's words came back to him, ‘Ole Man Manuel, s'not s'pose to be.' Words that invited him to shame. Words that tried to force themselves into him the way his mother and his aunts would pin his arms against his sides, pull his head back and pour medicine down his throat. Old Man Manuel … Peter and he were not supposed to be. Something, something must've happen. Something …

And whatever that something was, it shone like a dark light in their eyes; in the women's laughter by the river. It was there in the silence of his mother when she pulled him and Peter close to her to inspect their hair or skin. It was there when she combed their hair or bathed them. There in the words they said that Gideon had told her. It was the reason why Gideon had tried to take them away from her before she'd even had them. It was there, always there, in his grandmother's quiet gaze.

He felt a movement from his father, more a stirring of the air about him, and then the hand, rough like bark, resting against his right brow. His father's hand moved down and cupped his chin. Pynter eased himself away.

‘You'll meet Maddie tonight,' he said, swinging his head slightly at the large white concrete house a little way behind them. ‘Call her Miss Maddie, y'hear me? And when Pearly come to see me, call her Sister Pearl. As for Gideon … '

‘Gideon – he – he come here?'

‘Sometimes.'

‘He my brother too?'

‘He my son, you my child. He your brother.'

Pynter shook his head.

‘Whatsimatter?' The man looked at him concerned.

‘Then, den how come …' His tongue felt heavy on the words.

‘How come, what …?'

‘How come he try to kill us? Before we even born.'

As soon as he said it, he knew that something terrible had come out of his mouth. So terrible it froze the shape above him. Made it lower itself before him, reach out solid hands that closed down on his shoulders. He felt the deep ruffle of the bag just before it struck the floorboards. The vibration travelled up his feet and made his heart turn over. Now he felt his father's breath on his face.

‘Who tell you that? Who tell you that!'

He feared the rage seeping out of that voice. He feared the strength he felt in those fingers.

‘Nobody,' he stammered. ‘Nobody tell me nothing.'

The fingers released him. ‘You never use them words again, y'hear me, boy. Never lemme hear you say them words.'

‘No, Pa.'

His father stood up then, spoke as if he were addressing something that lay some place far beyond the walls of the house. ‘You call me Pa. I like dat. You must always call me Pa.'

Pynter nodded, swallowing hard on the soft knot in his throat.

He never asked his father who he left his rich garden to or why he gave it up as soon as his mother sent him off to live with him. Why so soon after Santay they were so quick to see him off again. Why they had chosen him instead of Peter. Why they would not tell him for how long.

‘Is you your father ask for,' his mother said. But she could not hold his eyes. She couldn't put words to the other things that her tied-up lips and drifting eyes were concealing from him.

He never asked his father about the silence which sat like an accusation between Miss Maddie and himself. Why Miss Maddie looked past him the way she did from the very first morning he called out to her, made her leave her porch and cross her lawn to come over and see her lil brother.

He was not sure she saw him. Her eyes had drifted skywards, over to the Kalivini hills, up to the Mardi Gras and finally down to some point above his head. They passed briefly over their father's face and settled on the concrete steps on which they were all standing. Small eyes in a face as dark and swollen as blood-pudding.

‘Uh-huh,' she grunted, and waddled back to her porch. He was sure she hadn't seen him.

Her son Paso came just when the small pre-dawn birds began to stir the early-morning stillness with their chirping, when the crickets quietened suddenly and altogether, and the silence they left behind got filled in by the humming of the ocean a couple of hills beyond and the whispery shiftings of the canes. He came like the tail end of a dream and seemed to disappear soon after, making Pynter wonder if he had ever been there at all.

‘A scamp,' his father told him, ‘a child of the night, that Paso. I don't remember what he look like now, becuz I don' know when last I see him. You never see him in the day.

‘Not surprising when a pusson know how and where the boy was born. Maddie picked 'im up in Puerto Rico, see? Take a boat back home when she was big as a full moon. Bring the belly back with her but not the man. She didn make it back to land on time. Had him on the sea. Matter o' fact,' the old man slapped his knee and laughed, ‘she had him in the middle of it. Now, a chile that come like that can't tell nobody which country he from, not so? Cuz he wasn' born in one. Now that's between me and you, y'unnerstan?'

Pynter thought about his father's words and began laughing too.

The old man seemed surprised by it. ‘'Mind me of a uncle you had – that laugh.'

‘He here?'

‘He out there. In the hallway. Just the picture. He not with us no more.'

‘He … '

‘Before you born. Sea take him.' His father passed his hand across his face as if he were washing it with air. ‘Funny fella he was, your uncle. But nice. Dress like a king. Dress in black, only black. We used to call him Parlourman because of the black. Pretty face. Smooth like a star apple. Talk pretty too. Every woman he meet used to want to kill for him; but he never was interested. I could never figure 'im out. He didn have no children either. Sank with a boat between Curaçao an' Panama.'

‘What dead feel like, Pa – it hurt?'

‘Don' know. Why you ask?'

‘Jus' want to know … '

‘When it come, I s'pose the part of you that know jus' not around to know no more, y'unnerstan?' As he touched the boy's face with the meat of his hand, a chuckle rose from his chest. ‘Even I don' unnerstan what I jus' tell you. Come eat some food. I glad you here.'

Over the steamed yams, sweet potatoes and fried shark that Miss Maddie had covered up and left on the steps for him, his father's eyes were on him again. This time it was a different look. It seemed impossible that the anger he'd seen there earlier could reside in eyes so soft.

‘You talk kind of funny too – like him.'

‘Like …?'

‘Like your Uncle Michael.'

He wanted to know more about this odd uncle that the sea had taken. To understand the nature of the quietness that came over his father when he called his name. But all he got was a
promise that wasn't really one, ‘P'raps I'll get the time to tell you about it one day, if I manage to find de mood.' Or a statement that was so tied up it took him many fruitless days of trying to unravel it. ‘When a man put hi dog to sleep, then is sleep it have to sleep, y'unnerstan?'