The Heart of Revenge (23 page)

I bought myself nothing. Every dollar I
earned I spent into the house. Made sure Aubrea and Pinky were
taken care of. Aubrea’s savings was similar to what she did in the
house - nothing. She wanted to keep on living the life she was
grown up in, which we couldn’t afford. And now that I wasn’t
getting any jobs, she had transformed into someone new. A lazy
spoilt bitch who cursed everyday about what she didn’t have. About
what she wanted to have. What she should have. She had transformed
into someone I never fell in love with. To be quite honest, if
years ago someone had said to me,

“You know when life gets tough Aubrea gonna
be your biggest adversary, she won’t stand by you but against
you.”

I would look at them without smiling and say
something sarcastic, like,

“And you know that before I die a black man
will be the president of America.” Or maybe something more off like
“A woman will be the Prime Minister of Jamaica before I die.”

Just say the impossible because I couldn’t
believe how much without money Aubrea changed. She hadn’t lost
feeling for me, it was just that her love had changed to something
else, something cold. Maybe ice. Or maybe hate.

The roach’s sharp prickly legs began to crawl
back into the crease of the old piece of cupboard. Mi eyes search
the floor like mad for a slippers or shoes, anything to clobber the
roach before it escaped. None in sight. I slithered closer, eyes
fixed on this roach. I wanted to smash this roach, kill it, kill
it. I doubled my fist, scan the floor again, squeezed my fist. I
stood still, watching the two smaller roaches escaping, crawling
into the board wall above the cupboard. Aubrea’s voice continued to
bicker from in her room.

“When you gone get money to buy gas and put
in the house? Look how long the stove don't turn on!”

Aubrea damn well and know I wanted a better
life too, yet she emptied all her blame on me, cutting me deep with
her tongue, over and over again,

“You too worthless. You damn cruff! Mi know
is this here kind of life you want live longtime.”

Aubrea knew my buttons and she was pushing
them well. I gave Aubrea the solution to solve our position, but
no, she refused to do it, I yelled it,

“Aubrea sell the car!” It wasn’t the first
time mi telling her to sell her car. “Sell your car and make we buy
little gas put in the kitchen!”

It made sense to me. It was better that we
sold the car and bought food for the fridge. Food for the baby. And
buy mi one of those lawn-mowers so mi could get more work. It would
make mi work faster and I could pay her back for the machine. But
Aubrea’s head was manufactured out of the same steel that made
lawn-mowers. With all my talking to her, trying to show her the
light, she wouldn’t take heed. She wouldn’t sell the car, not
because it was her father who had given it to her, as what she
continued to use for her excuse to not sell it, but because Aubrea
looked richer in the car than she looked in walk-foot. Better yet,
she looked better off than people, that was the bottom-line. She
wanted to impress everybody in the community to believe that she
was better off than them. We had the only car in the community and
she wasn’t giving up that hype. Although she never said this
outright but to me, Aubrea rather to look and make people think she
was in a better position than them, rather than to have a bottle of
syrup in the cupboard, some yam and potato in the old fridge, on
our plate, on our scrape-up table and in our hungry bellies. Her
reasoning was never too logical to me. Her damn voice sounded like
fingernails making that squeeing annoying sound on clean glass, it
got louder, sickening, I couldn’t fucking stand it no more and like
a lighted match thrown in a full gas cylinder, she exploded in
utmost rage,

“Mi sick and tired of you! Why you don’t
leave? Eeh? LEAVE! Just fucking leave the house an go on!
LEEAAVE!”

One swift grab. I snatched the fat brown
cockroach, squeezed. Squeezed it in my fist till the feeling of its
stabbing sharp pricks on its legs scrawling against my palm to
escape was gone. Its wings crushed. Its feelers stopped twitching
and scrambling against my thumb, just stopped moving. It’s feelers
touching my thumb felt light, yet so sharp and stiff as if they
were two thin brown bones growing out of its head. I needed to
leave this house, now. Now. Before I explode. I needed a drink.
Vodka. Aubrea’s door slammed and her footstep clummed louder and
louder as she blazed to the kitchen. The little devil woman
lighting her tongue on fire, her antagonising voice pelting out at
me,

“Answer mi nuh worthless boy!”

I gritted my teeth. Squeezed my fist tighter.
The dry crushy sound was louder than the wet squishy sound as I
squeezed and burst the disgusting roach’s bottom with a splashing
‘pop-pluck’ sound. The semi-solid cream from the roach’s soft ass
spewing into my hand felt not wet, put icky-sticky, a nasty type of
clammy feeling as it stuck unto my hand. It wasn’t warm, the white
mush felt almost cold. Some of it dropped to the floor. The
devil-ridden woman marched into the kitchen, shoved me on the
shoulder. I turned around. She spat at my left eye. Her spit landed
on my cheek. This was more than nag. Her words sliced me like a
sword. Her spit got me violent. She cursed,

“Mi don’t want you in mi house! Come out!
Loser! Fucking worthless!”

I rather to be chewing on tin foil paper than
to hear her words. I was silent. But I squeezed. Muscled my hand.
Squeezed. Squeezed. Squeezed the last of the white marshy shit,
squirting it out in my hand. Squeezed. I couldn’t stand it. I wiped
some of her spit off my cheek with my clean hand. I needed a
change. I released my fist, filled my lungs with air, let it out.
Crumbs and white fell to the red floor. A piece of its wing, feet
and head still stuck in my palm. The perfect condition to shot
Aubrea a box that people in Hong Kong could hear. Aubrea
cursed,

“Come out!” Shoved me again, in my chest,
“Come out!” My anger built. Shoved me again. I open my hand. “COME
OUT NOW!”

I chanted inside my head,’ Don't let the tail
wag the dog. Don't let the tail wag the dog. Don't let the tail wag
the dog.’

I looked at the scandal bag of garbage on the
floor, then looked at her, not seeing her eyes in the dark kitchen
but penetrating them as I asked,

“You want mi to leave?”

“Mi regret the day mi never listen to Daddy!”
As she screamed those ruthless cruel big stones into my feelings, I
folded back my hand into a hard fist. Her mouth would be the
perfect target. Don't let the tail wag the dog. Don't let the tail
wag the dog. “Don’t know why mi ever did go married a poor man! Is
the worst thing ever happen to mi in my life!”

“Mi trying every bloodseed thing! What else
you want mi to do? Eeh? Turn water into Hennessy? Eeh? WHAT
ELSE?”

I stomped out the kitchen into the
livingroom. Walked away. Best thing to do. She followed.
Raging.

My brain wasn’t the size of a football, maybe
a hollow ping-pong ball, but even I could figure out why Aubrea was
truly sick to her stomach of me. All her life she was used to
having more than she needed, excess. Luxury. Without having to lift
a straw. Now she had less than she needed to survive. Poverty.

Her parents had warned her over and over
again.

“Lee, if you choose to be with that poor
ghetto guy you choosing not to be a part of the family. And we’re
serious about this. We can’t afford to ruin the family’s reputation
by choosing to stoop so low and mingle with that kind. The Lexings
are beneath us. Moreover, for you to have a baby with that trash.
We will pay for your abortion. Leave him.”

Aubrea didn’t choose to not be with her
parents. At sixteen, she was choosing love. She was choosing to
carry her child. Drop out of school and fight the storm with me,
her teenage love. But now the storm was a mercilessly freezing
blizzard. Her reality was cold. It was poor. It was frightening.
She wanted to undo everything. Wished she didn’t have Pinky. Wanted
to go back home to Daddy, to luxury. And she could. If this were a
game, but it wasn’t. It was reality. It was her life. She had never
seen hungry days before. Never had a belly full up of gas. Never
seen toilet paperless days. It was a cruel awakening that proved
smiles were scarce with poverty, frowns were plenty and anger was
high and peaking. Poverty was hell. And for the poor, money became
your only saviour to living like humans. Money became God for many.
Steal, kill, prostitution for salvation, for money.

Aubrea didn’t believe in love any more. She
believed in money. How far would she go for money? I didn't know.
It depended on what heavens her new God offered her in return.
Cheat maybe. Lie maybe. Give up her child maybe. Save a child
maybe. Kill?

The fury was getting redder and redder in
Aubrea. Her voice rang out in a condescending tone, loud enough so
the neighbours could hear clearly without cocking their ears at the
fence.

“You call yourself a man? ... And you can’t
take care of your child. Mi should’ve had an abortion! I would have
been much better off.” She shoved me from behind. I felt it through
my back all the way through to my chest. “ You can’t take care of
mi!”

“Why you stay with mi then? Mi tie you
down?”

“Young mi young and fool! Mommy was right,
never talk to a poor man!”

I snapped around in one spin, facing her, eye
to eye,

“Leave then nuh!” The scent from the kitchen
was high and as strong as the scent of gasoline at the gas station
but if this scent was gasoline it was the stinking-est one. The
scent travelled into the living room. The moon was in the sky but
in the living room felt like the parching sun was in the kitchen.
My neck began to sweat. I felt hot and clustered and stink.

“You leave! This is MY house. You don't own
dry shit in here. Leave. Leave. JUST LEAVE AND GO ON!” I believe
the entire neighbourhood heard her loud and clear, but it still
didn’t register in my ping-pong brain. It was easier for me to
swallow her whole than for me to swallow the news. I had nowhere to
go.

“You want mi to leave? Want mi to leave?”
Fire blazed out my eyes into hers. But my flame was a baby pup to
her roaring lion. She was always better at getting angrier than me,
even if she was in the wrong.

“Yes! ...Now!... Leave now. Come out of mi
house! Get out of my life!”

Pinky burst through the blue curtain that was
hung at the door entrance to the livingroom, running towards me and
collided her underfed body with my leg. She feebly hugged around
one of my legs.

“Mi not leaving mi daughter.” I placed a hand
on Pinky’s head, covering one of her big plaits in her head. She
stretched up her two anorexic arms. They looked like two flimsy
shoes string attached to her shoulders for arms, wanting me to lift
her up. Mi wipe the crushed roach out my hand on the batty of my
shorts, all over the back-pocket. Mi use the back of my hand to
wipe the rest of Aubrea’s spit out of my face.

“Daddy ... Daddy” Pinky’s voice was
whimpering. I stepped away from her.

“Pinky, go sit down.” I said to her, I was
busy cursing and still angry.

“Mi hate every single bone that make you up
old cruff! My life was perfect before mi meet you. You destroy mi
life! Mi have nothing now. Nothing, but that damn red child that
looks so much like you that it hurts.” I looked down at my baby
Pinky “Mi sick and tired of you talking ’bout you trying, you
trying. When you getting nothing done? We starving.”

“You starving little liar gal?”

“Yes mi starving. When last you buy piece of
mutton? Look on Micheal Douglas them. Look at Daddy. When you gonna
be a real man and stand up to your responsibility like them?”

“The same year you stand up to yours. You
don’t have no responsibility too, eeh? It’s me one?”

Mi don't know what was wrong with my lulu
wife, but I was always standing up to my responsibility, she made
it seem as if mi didn't do nothing since we were together. With the
little mi made, mi take care of her the best way mi could afford
to, she and my little girl, Pinky. Mi just never have nothing and
couldn’t afford nothing right now. Mi think she was confusing
responsible with rich, with money, excess, luxury. She always had a
lustful eye for Douglas’ things.

“Go sleep with Micheal Douglas then since you
love call up him name ... and you love him things Ms.
Pretty-car-and-big-house-eye. Is rich man you want? Go lay down
with him then nuh.” And I forcefully added, “Make his coolie woman
chop you up into eight separate pieces like Dominoes pizza. Since
is that you want.” Pinky tottered over to Aubrea.

“Yes. Is that mi want. Mi wouldn’t be
suffering like dog now.”

Pinky began to cry with a sour face.

“Little gal, shut up your mouth!” Aubrea
screamed at my baby and pushed her away. “You and your Poopa is the
same damn thing.” Pinky ran back to me. “Mi could just stab you
right in your face right now for what you putting mi through. GET
OUT!”

Aubrea was offered a heaven. It was to let me
leave with her only child, our child, so she could get her freedom,
pursue money. Her decision was already made. Her happiness. She was
already taking out a lot of her bottled up bitterness on Pinky. She
had grown to hate me so much that the very sight of Pinky irritated
her because Pinky was the splitting image of me. When Aubrea looked
at Pinky, she didn’t see her child, all she saw was me. What
mattered more was that if she didn’t have Pinky with me she could
have been up and gone her ways already. Wouldn’t have to be in this
situation now, living a life of sufferation. She wished she didn’t
have Pinky. Wished she had listen to her parents and did the
abortion. Pinky was the crosses that helped tie her down in this.
Pinky was the best thing to ever had happened to me.