The New Moon's Arms (21 page)

“Yes?”

He stopped, panting a little. “I just want to ask you… Mummy’s too shamed to ask you herself, but I know she wants to know.”

“What?”

“Don’t laugh when you hear this, all right? Or I won’t be able to keep my face straight when I go back to her.”

“What she want?”

I didn’t have to do a thing. He was chuckling the moment he began to say the words. “She never found her bloomers that she lost that day at the funeral. She been thinking maybe somebody find it and been keeping it for her.”

Evelyn flashed me a look of mock-horror. I mouthed,
I tell you later
. “No,” I said. “Nobody did. At least, Parson never told me about anyone finding it.” I’d materialised the plate, too! The one that had dropped in the funeral parlour! Chastity used to have a favourite blue-and-white plate.

Leroy nodded, got his face under control. “All right. Thank you.” He left in the direction of where he must have parked his car. I had left that plate in Dadda’s house when I moved in with Auntie Pearl and Uncle Edward.

“What
that
was all about?” Evelyn asked.

“Mrs. Winter is my supervisor at work. Her panties fell off at the graveside during Dadda’s funeral.”

Evelyn cackled. “You lie! Right in front of everybody?”

I nodded. “Ee-hee.”
I had had a hot flash in the funeral parlour, and my favourite plate had dropped out of the sky and broken.
“She tried to kick the panties away so nobody wouldn’t see, but they tangled up her foot, and she fell. That’s why her ankle sprain.”
Found, and then lost again.

Evelyn chuckled. “Man, I wish if I had been there.”

“You don’t hear the best part yet; it’s my pin she was using to hold the panties up. It was all warped out of shape when I found it on the grass.”

“Lord Jesus.”

That was the same look of devilment on young Evelyn’s face the day we were drawing pictures in school of what everyone would look like naked, and passing the pictures back and forth during Biology class. I wanted to tell her:
Ev, I’m finding again
. She would understand. But I didn’t say anything. Still too much rawness between her and me.

The car was cool enough now. I deposited Agway into the passenger seat and went round to the driver’s side. “Later, then,” I said to Evelyn.

She nodded, staring at Agway. “Such an incredible theory you have. About sea people, I mean.”

“Mm.” Theory, my big black behind.

“I want to drop in and see him from time to time. Just look him over, you know? Write up some notes for myself.”

I stiffened. “So, this is how I’m to repay you? By letting you treat him like a research subject?”

Her face went hard. “Calamity, why you have to be so harsh all the time?”

“I had good teachers.”

She sighed. “Well, most likely it’s nothing. These things usually are. I have to tell you, though; for Social Services to let you keep him, I have to confirm that he’s doing well with you.”

I glared at her, but she had the power to take Agway. Maybe he had, I didn’t know what—sea aunties, or cousins, or something. Fuck, if only he and I could talk! “All right,” I said to Evelyn. “When you want to come and see him?”

I had forgotten that gloating smile of hers when she got her way. “How about Sunday coming?”

“Six o’clock do you?”

“Six is perfect!” she chirruped. “See you then.” She waved, made an infuriatingly dainty Evelyn twirl, and went her ways. I kissed my teeth and got into the car.

W
ELL
, if clothing was difficult to make Agway get used to, the car’s seatbelt was impossible. It was like trying to chain an eel. When we were both exhausted and he was weeping with frustration and anger, I finally gave up. I drove very carefully to the waterbus docks, just praying he wouldn’t try to climb into my lap. I kept all the windows but mine rolled up. Luckily, with a newly broken leg and a heavy cast, he didn’t seem inclined to move around much. He just gaped through the window glass and pointed, babbling away happily at the wonders he saw out there. From time to time he knotted one fist in his own matted-up hair with the shells in it. He even sucked at the shells.

If I never found his family, he would have to stay on land, go to school.

Oh, look; it’s Charity Girl!

Nobody was going to make this child a laughingstock. Not while I was around to draw breath. “First thing you need, my boy, is a haircut.”

When we got to the dock, Agway got excited. His first glimpse of the sea in two days. He tried to climb out his window, but only clunked his forehead against the glass. I ran my window up. He complained at me, clearly telling me that he wanted the stupid force field to go away. When that didn’t work, he tried pushing at the glass with his hands, grizzling the whole time. From grizzling he progressed to whining; from whining to something that sounded a lot like cussing; from cussing to a full-blown toddler tantrum of shrieking, bawling, kicking, lashing out. I had to slip the waterbus fare out with one hand through a chink in the top of my window. With the other one, I was trying to keep Agway quiet in his seat.

The ticket-taker peered into the car to see what all the commotion was about. “That’s the little boy!” she said. “The one you saved!” Cayaba Gossip Cable was clearly in full effect.

I steered the car one-handed onto the waterbus, found a place on the lower level where there was no view of the sea. Parked and pulled a flailing Agway into my arms. No way I could open the windows the whole way. “Baby boy, baby boy,” I said, “you can’t jump in the water. Not with this cast on your leg.”

He kicked and shrieked. His hand got me a good one in the jaw. Then his elbow connected with the horn. It blatted, and he jumped. He went utterly still. He stared at the horn. He leaned over and hit it again. He chortled at the sound. The people in the cars around us glared at me. It was going to be a long ride home.

W
HEN I FINALLY PULLED UP
in front of Dadda’s house, there was a small crowd outside the resurrected cashew grove. Lord, give me strength; what to tell all those people?

I turned off the ignition and thankfully opened the window. It had been blasted hot, having the windows up for the whole trip. Agway’s first cheque was going to put air conditioning in my car. Keep both of us more comfortable.

Over by the orchard gate, Mr. Lessing asked Mrs. Lessing, “What kind of trees they are?” The Lessings were my closest neighbours, a good mile away.

“Like you don’t have eyes?” she said. “Anybody could see arac apples growing on them.”

Two teenaged boys were swinging on the low fence. “So climb over and go inside then, nuh?” one of them dared the other. His friend just kissed his teeth, trying to look cool.

“Those not no blasted arac apples,” snapped Mr. Lessing. “And besides, how a whole orchard just spring up like that overnight?”

The two young men started lobbing pebbles towards the

cashew trees. Mrs. Lessing made them stop.

Maybe I could sneak past them all and get inside the house. I opened my door and pulled Agway towards me. I got him as far as the driver’s seat when I heard: “Mummy, I could go and play in there?” My heart lurched. The little boy who’d asked the question was tugging at his mother’s hem and pointing at the trees.

She stooped down till they were eye to eye. “You not going in there unless I give permission. You hear me?”

He pouted. “Yes, Mummy.”

That’s when Agway did his trick again. He leaned on the car horn, grinning. Shit. He giggled as I pulled him out of the car and up onto my hip. My left lower back twinged at the motion.

I turned to face the crowd. Everybody was staring at us. “You see what you did?” I muttered to Agway. He reached towards the beloved car horn, nearly overbalancing the two of us. I stepped away from Victoria, kicked her door shut.

“Calamity; you reach?” It was Mrs. Soledad, coming towards us out of the crowd. I took Agway to meet his new babysitter.

“So this is the boy?” she asked. Today the hat was a snappy purple fedora.

“I’m calling him Agway.” Shy, Agway buried his face in my bosom.

Mrs. Soledad’s topper kept drawing my eye. Attached to the hat band, a jungle of cloth flowers fought for space with plastic fruit whose real counterparts had no climate zones in common: bright red hibiscuses elbowed dewy purple grapes aside; bougainvilleas in every colour tickled the cheeks of plump maroon American cherries.

“Who let his hair get like that?”

“I guess his parents.” There was even a snake lily in the hat band. And three loquats.

She kissed her teeth. “Have the child looking wild like that.”

Wild. She didn’t know the half of it.

“You going to want to get him some hats,” she said. She pointed at the sky. “The cancers, you know.”

Agway started to fuss. “He been cooped up in the car for too long,” I said. “Come inside with me, nuh?”

The Lessings were heading our way, the rest of our neighbours not far behind. I groaned.

Mrs. Lessing asked her husband, “If it’s not arac apples, then what?”

“Arac apples have their seed inside,” he replied. “You don’t see those have the seed on the outside? I don’t know why you won’t wear your glasses. Chastity; like you take up farming, or what?”

Mrs. Lessing added, “And who is this you have with you?”

“Don’t tell me he and all spring up overnight,” grumbled Mr. Lessing.

“He got lost at sea in the storm the other night,” I answered.

Murmurs of pity came from the crowd. “I read about him in the papers,” someone said. “It’s Chastity who find him.”

“He’s staying with me for a little bit.” Agway looked up at me, tried to reach for a nubbin of my hair.

“What’s your name, baby?” Mrs. Soledad asked Agway. He ignored her.

“He’s deaf?” asked Mrs. Lessing.

“Mannerless,” her husband said. “All the youths mannerless nowadays.” He glared at the two boys who’d been throwing stones.

“He just don’t understand English,” I told him.

“What then? French?” asked the woman whose son wanted to go and play in the cashew grove. I sometimes saw her riding the same waterbus with me on my way to work in the mornings. I’d never spoken to her before this.

I shook my head. “We don’t know what he talks yet.”

Agway, restless, started to fuss. “Look at that,” said Mrs. Soledad. “Maybe he need to change his diaper. Big boy like this, and not potty-trained yet. Calamity, take him inside.” She shooed me towards the house like any hen. Gratefully, I climbed the steps to the porch. To the crowd, she said, “Allyou must go away and leave the child to settle in. Calamity could explain about the

cashew trees later.”

Like hell I could. Inside, I put Agway on the couch and peeked through the jalousie windows at the front yard. With me no longer there to interrogate, the crowd began to thin. As the Lessings turned to leave, Mrs. Lessing said to her husband,

“Cashew trees? Her father used to raise cashews once upon a time, nuh true?”

“So he tell me.”

“I’
M SO GLAD
you can do this, Mrs. Soledad. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Yeah, man.” She was dandling Agway in her lap. She’d agreed to come and look after him every Tuesday through Thursday when I would be at work.

“Okay if I pay you every two weeks?”

“Ouch!” Her hat was on the floor, her head cranked towards her shoulder. Agway had discovered her two long plaits and was yanking on one as hard as he could.

“Shit, I’m sorry!” I leapt up to help her. “It’s just this thing he likes to do.”

Between us, we got him to at least give her enough play so that she could hold her head upright. To distract him, I gave him Dumpy. Didn’t work; he just took it in one hand.

“I should tell you, he don’t seem to like sweet things.” She nodded. Agway held Dumpy up in the air and inspected it.

“And I brought home some liquid painkiller. He might need to get it every four hours or so. Depend on if the leg’s paining him or not.”

“All right. Where he going to be sleeping?”

With a happy screech, Agway slung Dumpy across the room. Mrs. Soledad hissed as the motion pulled on her head. Dumpy hit the coffee table and knocked a vase down. I managed to catch it before it rolled off the table.

“You right, you know,” said Mrs. Soledad.

“Pardon?”

“You can’t thank me enough.”

A
T LUNCH
Agway licked all the butter off his baked potato before eating the potato itself. Then I put him on Dadda’s bed for a nap. I sat on the bed and watched him sleep. I would have to stay with him the first few nights to keep him from falling out of the bed, and to keep him company. But he would have to learn to sleep alone soon. After all, suppose I wanted to have an overnight guest? My body tingled with the memories of Gene’s skin against mine; of Hector’s eyes searching mine.

This room looked like an old man’s, not a young boy’s. I got a bucket from the kitchen and loaded it with Dadda’s colognes and creams and medicines from the top of the dresser, leaving only the dust. I got a singlet out of the dresser drawer and used it as a dustcloth. Better. I was halfway to the living room when I remembered the bucket full of medicines I’d left in Dadda’s room. I went back and got it. Threw them all out. Wasn’t making that mistake twice in a lifetime.

I took Dumpy from the living room and put him on top of the dresser. More like it.

I pulled open Dadda’s closet doors. A dry smell drifted out. I dove behind the hanging clothes, took out the suitcase Dadda kept in there. I piled all the clothes from the dresser into it and sat on it till I could get the zipper closed. “Beg pardon, Dadda,” I whispered. “You see that it’s in a good cause though, right?”

Out in the living room, the land line rang. So loud! It could wake Agway. I got to it on its third ring. “Hello?”

“Cal? That’s you?”

“Michael?” My skin flushed hot. My fingers itched fiercely. Chastity’s once favourite mug, her blue-and-white cocoa-tea mug to match the broken plate, rolled out from under the couch.

“Girl, you never answer your cell phone?”

“Uh, reception still not too good out here. How you got this number?”