Iron Balloons (12 page)

The plant was also near to a little airstrip. In fact, sometimes I use to look out my window and see eye-to-eye with some o’ the guys who use to fly those little planes. No exaggeration. Wave to them sometimes. Sometimes when I feeling mischievous I use to even blow them a little kiss. And when I was bored or tired, sometimes, I use to stand up by the window and watch the harbor pilots use the tugboats to guide in those big cargo ships coming from all across the world.

If you doubt me, you have to remember that my office was third floor—upstairs—and most of the buildings around was lower than us, mostly one-story and two-story, so we in the office could see everything. Sometimes we use to watch the white sea birds them just glide in and perch on the big red cranes they use to use to take the cargo from the ship. And you know what we do sometimes? Gamble. In fact, we use to gamble nearly every day. Not for any big money or anything, but like for who going buy who lunch. Well, you know that as the boss I was the bookie. I use to give them the odds—how many birds was going to perch on a crane in a hour? If a crane was full o’ birds, which bird was going be the next one to leave? Yes, man. I was the house. And you know why? The house always win. And I don’t like lose. I was born to lose in life, but I find a way to win. So I not going go back to lose again.

We had moved up to Havendale by that time, far from where we use to live at Deanery Road. We lived in Range between Havendale and Deanery Road. Havendale and those places was like night and day. Only new-style house was up in Havendale, and the area was not like how I hear it turn now, a place where any and anybody can live. In those days, is only bank manager and people like that use to live up there. Lawyer, doctor, politician, businesspeople. Is only people like that could afford to buy the lot. If you have a teacher or a nurse up there, it was because their husband was something else. No sir. They couldn’t afford to live up there without help.

How it went is that you had to buy the lot and get a contractor to build your house how you want it. But you had three or four that use to do most people house. You don’t have those type o’ house in New York, so I can’t even give you a example for you to see what I talking ’bout. You have to go to the older parts o’ Florida to see what I talking ’bout. Solid, concrete house with steel bar inside. And even Florida not building house like that again. As soon as storm lick Florida—
boof
—all the new house blow down. Frame house. All they do is clap some piece o’ cheap board together and disguise a pretty look around it. And people buy them, for they look nice. In Jamaica, frame house is what we make to keep chicken round the back. Fowl coop.

So anyway, we reach Havendale now, and everything is behind us. Progress time! Every time I think about that house is like water want to come to my eye. It was the first house I own. When you talk ’bout land space. My lot was a half-acre, and you still had some bigger than mine. And everybody use to keep up their lawn, and line it round with flower beds, and plant they croton or bougainvillea hedge beside their fence. To tell you how the land was big, when we moved there, Roger, my last boy was eleven years old, and he couldn’t throw a tennis ball to reach his brother on the back porch from down by the back fence.

But to be honest, it was hard to keep up. We were the only house I knew that didn’t have mother and father there, and I didn’t want anybody to think of my children as less. Because, let’s be frank, I was a divorcée—worse, without the schooling or the color like them. So although the two-job thing was tiring, I use to keep it up.

I use to drop the children to school every morning and pick them up every evening in the blue Cortina that I buy from Mr. Parnell for a very good price. I’ll never forget the license plate, R 7255. Boy … that Mr. Parnell. When I was thinking how to buy the house, I went to him and he lend me five thousand dollars to put on what I had saved up myself, and we shake on it to say I’d pay him back little-little over time. No paperwork. You know why? I was a dedicated worker, and although I had the chance I never t’ief.

So anyway, when I picking up the children is really on my lunchtime, because schools use to over between 1 and 1:30. What I use to do is: pick them up, bring them home, and leave them with Miss Noddy, the helper, who use to live in, then go back to the plant. When I leave the plant at 5 o’clock, I use to batter with the traffic all the way from the waterfront to New Kingston, which was brand new those days, to my second job in the office at the Pegasus Hotel.

That hotel is still there. Still nice. Tall and broad like a big domino. Blue on the front and white on the sides. But it look a little different now, because the golf course across the street, they turn into a park. I don’t know why that make it look different, but is true. You still have all the flags in front of it, so it still look official. But without the golf, a little bit o’ something gone.

I use to work at the Pegasus till midnight every night, then drive home alone to 64 Border Avenue. When I reach, I barely had the strength to eat a little dinner. I use to heat it up myself. I never use to bother wake Miss Noddy. I wasn’t like some people who use to bother their helper whatever hour they come in. Some people never have no conscience, you know.

After I eat and done now, I use to bathe off the day and go to sleep for a few hours to start all over again.

But in truth, the first thing I use to do when I go home wasn’t eat. Every night I come home I use to make a beeline to the children’s room to leave a Cadbury chocolate for them in their bed. Each one like a different kind. Roger like Dairy Milk. Andrew like Whole Nut. And Karen like Fruit & Nut. And if I ever mix them up, you see, they use to tease me and laugh and play all kind o’ jokes like bring me a slice o’ cheese if I ask for a slice o’ bread. Then when they see the look on my face, they use to just bus’ out in a laugh. In truth, we use to have a lot o’ fun. Those were very good times.

On Saturdays now, I use to drop Karen down at the Singer store in Tropical Plaza for her sewing lessons, then take the boys to YMCA, because they use to like to swim.

Then while the children at their lessons, I use to go up to the Pegasus to do any work left over from the week. If I had the time or the feeling, I would go up to the doctor’s compound at the university, where I had a doctor friend. This would only happen sometimes. I didn’t want nobody spreading rumors. And rumors was easy to start, because in Jamaica those days you didn’t have a lot of cars, so everybody know is whose car park up at your gate. And they use to watch and see for how long. Plus, that kind o’ friendship wasn’t very important to me. That kind of friendship will distract you. And next thing you know, you start to put man before your children.

Listen to me, when you decide to go it alone, you have to go it alone. When the children get big now and gone, you can think ’bout yourself. But when they small, you have to be responsible. Next thing you bring in a man on them and you think the man is the greatest thing on earth, and when you hear for the shout, as soon as you turn your back, the man taking all kind o’ step with your girl child. Or next thing your son can’t get on with him and that make the boy can’t concentrate on schoolwork—and to get an escape, now, the boy go turn Rasta and start to smoke ganja and get worthless. I see it happen. Is not guess I guessing. I telling you from experience. I giving you facts.

Anyway, when I pick them up after they lessons now, I use to take them for lunch at the hotel. After all, children should be exposed. And when they finish with they lunch, they use to do their homework in the office with me, then all of us would go home. If not, we’d most times stop off for a movie at Premiere.

When you have to be moving like that everyday, everything has to be on time. So I trained the children a certain way. I made them understand certain things. And one of them is that when I’m ready to pick them up, they
must
be ready for me.

Every school in Jamaica has a big tree where children wait for their parents in the afternoon, and all three o’ my children went to different schools. So if one of them late, it make the next one late, and so on down the line. When they’re late then I’m late. And although Mr. Parnell liked me, he was an Englishman, and English people worship time.

Liver damage kill the children’s father two years after I left the house at Deanery Road; so all I’m thinking every day is that there’s no one to look after the children if I lose my little work. They had uncles and aunties, yes, but they couldn’t do more than take care o’ their children or themselves.

So anyway, this is how the story really start: One evening when Karen was about sixteen, I went to pick her up at school and she wasn’t underneath her tree. I nearly went mad.

When I really look under the tree, I saw a girl that look like she could be in her class. And I say
could
because I was too busy working to go to any PTA. So in reality, I use to hear the children calling various names at home, but I didn’t know who was who. Plus, when I use to pick up the kids in the evenings, I only use to have a little time. So it was open and shut. Open car door. Jump in fast. Shut car door. And drive.

So I clap and point to call the girl—none of the boys didn’t know her name—and she told me that Karen was gone with Claudia deMercardo to Woolworth’s in Mall Plaza to window shop, and walk up and down, and flirt with boys.

When I heard that, I thought I was going to go out o’ my mind. Now, the girl didn’t say exactly what they’d gone to Mall Plaza to do. But that is what I pick from it.

You see, although my mother wasn’t a educated woman, she had a lot o’ common sense. And from I was a little girl, I use to hear her say that you have certain signs that wi’ tell you if a girl going grow up and behave like a prostitute. And is not just because she’s my mother why I agree with her. I take my own two eyes and see it, so I take it as truth.

Take what I say and mark it. Write it down if you want. You ready? Here we go: Any girl that like to walk up and down from store to store after school instead of going home to study, because her eyes are in love with pretty things; and any girl who like to pluck her eyebrows so she can look like a big woman when she is still a child; and any girl who like to sing in the shower like she want the whole world to get excited that she naked in there—you take it from me, Ciselyn Thompson, that girl is going to be a prostitute. She have a whoring nature. She have certain intentions in the back o’ her mind.

Now you might say I’m being harsh or that a girl might have inclinations, but that don’t mean they have to come to light. You listen to me right now. You have grown men who could see these things in young girls before the girls see it themselves. And these men use to make it a point o’ duty to go up to the plazas and prey on aimless girls. Friend them up. Buy jumbo malt for them at Woolworth’s. And soon after that now, they start to give them little things. Little earrings. Little chaparitas. And tell them to tell their mother and father lie that they school friend give them for they birthday. Then after that now, they start to give them car drive. Pocket money come later. Then when the child least expect it, they start to pressure her for sex; and nine times out o’ ten, they give in.

Now, you use your own brain and sift what I just tell you before you answer. If a girl sleep with a man because him give her things and money, is not a prostitute that?

Yes, professor … I see you giving me the signal again, but I can’t stop now. I have to go on. Bear with me. Bear with me. This thing is too important. Way beyond this class.

My fellow classmates, that girl that Karen went to the plazas with, Claudia deMercardo, use to pluck out her eyebrows till all she leave back was a line. At the age of sixteen that girl already had a dirty reputation. She was—excuse me—a damn mattress.

I use to say to Karen when she use to ask if she could shave her eyebrow, “That look good to you? That look good? What sense they leave that line for? They no might as well just finish and done and just shave it off. What? They eye need a Parisian moustache?”

I use to talk to Karen about Claudia deMercardo all the time, because she was always asking Karen to ask me if she could spend the weekend at her house. Her people was real money people. They use to own in-bond stores and gas stations and a car distributorship. Where they use to live had everything, from pool to tennis court. And as far as I knew, people with that kind o’ money never really like people who black like me, especially when they
think
they white.

So whenever Karen ask me if she could go up there, I use to tell her no. Any parent who allow their sixteen-yearold daughter to do her eyebrow like that is not responsible. They’re slack! And slack parents make all kind o’ slack things go on in their house. Next thing you know, they allowing Claudia to drink, and have boys coming there and all those kind o’ things.

Listen, man. Let me tell you something. Boyfriend and that kind o’ thing couldn’t work in my house. Boyfriend? For a girl in school. University is a different thing. That time they’re grown. But
high school?
You must be mad!

I use to instill it in Karen every day: “Don’t put man on your head. Put your books.” I use to remind her that Claudia deMercardo and those fair-skin girls she know from school don’t have to pass no exam to get ahead in life. As soon as they finish school their parents giving them a job in a business. And even if they do start from the bottom, in two twos they reach the top, regardless of qualification. I told Karen, “They not like me and you! People like me and you
must
have a profession.”

But at the time she didn’t want to listen to me. She wanted to follow fashion. She wanted to act like she was carefree, as if she didn’t know is me alone she have to make everything work for her, and that if I slip, she slide. She wanted to rebel.

You know I had to wait for Karen for a hour? You hear me? A hour. I kept on saying, “Lord Jesus, I wonder if something happen to Claudia and Karen.” Because I couldn’t believe that Karen would do that to me, when she know I only have my lunchtime. And is not like now when you have cell phone and can call people and say you’re running late. In those days, if you late you just late, and by the time you get to where you was suppose to be, everybody face done make up a’ready, and everybody jump to their own conclusion. So it don’t even make no sense you try explain.