Kingston Noir (29 page)
The girl began to behave herself under this regimen. Full compliance came in only four weeks time. After this, she merely had to threaten and the girl would get in line.
What had she been thinking? Jesus Christ.
One thing ended up leading to another. She, a God-fearing woman, began to weave a net of lies—like, Grace gone America to live with her father, or, She going to finish high school over there; I want her to go medical school for she is a girl that want to reach very high.
When the girl became very quiet, she wasn’t sure if she was just depressed like most women are when they are pregnant. But it was clear that she’d lost all of her vitality and had begun to drift around the little house.
What had she planned to say when the baby was born? She’d never gotten that far in her thoughts. And she began to wonder now, as the heat rose up with the full morning, if she’d simply been testing God, or if it had been a matter of crossing that bridge when she got there, or if she’d been teetering on the edge of madness. It was possible. For wasn’t it madness that made mortals challenge the Almighty?
What struck her now as she drained what was left of the cold coffee in the mug was that Linton had never once asked her about Grace, never cared to find out where she had gone during the time when she’d disappeared, and she’d passed his house and he’d driven by her in his sports car many times.
One time as she passed him hanging out outside his house, she cut her eyes and railed in tongues. He said: Witchy Poo, you think throw-word can frighten badman? Hey, you know why I don’t bloodclaat shoot you? Is through I love your daughter. Don’t worry, when she legal I going give you a money for her and put on a ring. I going make sure you don’t change bed pan and wash sore foot forever. So don’t gimme bad eye too tough.
She spoke more tongues and shook out her skirt and went home to her daughter, whom she’d been caring for with saline drips and fish soup and chicken with dumplings for six whole months, and God saw that it was good.
Petunia stood up. There were sirens coming fast from up the block. She threw the mug away into the garden and wept for what she’d seen and done just hours before.
When she’d come home from her night shift, Grace was splayed out on her bedroom floor, legs so wide they looked unhinged. And blood. Lord have mercy! Blood everywhere. The sheets. The floor. The walls. It was like an evil spirit had been called from hell to rip her child apart, to tear the baby from her womb.
The baby, such as it was, was in its own splatter on the floor near Grace’s feet. Someone would have come if she’d been screaming. This Petunia knew. But she, her mother, had done her job too well, had broken her daughter’s will so badly that the girl had been alive but not living, walking but dead.
The cry that came from Petunia was so old, so primal, and yet so soft, a whisper swaddled in a rasp, a sound one hears from feral cats. As she cried this soft cry, there was a flutter, a movement so subtle it could have been imagined, could have been a trick. And she paused and stared, and noticed it again, a slight tremor of breathing at her daughter’s neck.
What must a mother do for the suffering child? What must a mother do if she wants to keep her pledge to God?
Petunia went into her room, kneeled beside her bed, and reached below it for her father’s knife. With her hand over her daughter’s eyes, she put the edge against her throat and flinched, repeating to herself that she was saving her from suffering, that this was a mercy like Abraham had offered to Isaac before the Lord had stayed his hand, and that even though God had neglected her, she would be strong. Like Cain, she would have to make her own way.
But then she peeled her hand from Grace’s face and saw the dead-fish eyes, and relented. Tried to wake her. Call her back.
She knew from all those moments down at KPH that when the breath was gone it’s too late, but she tried anyway, because there is no training or experience for death happening to your own daughter, especially at your own hands.
Nothing to do but sit in all that blood and cry until there is nothing but air, a choking that in its own way brings comfort. Then you shower. Then you change.
You make your coffee. You go on your veranda. You make the call.
You wait.
W
ould someone adjust this mike just a
little
for me, please? That’s good. How do I sound?
So, in 1975—what’s that? About thirty-five years ago?—I got myself into a really bad situation in Jamaica. Needless to say, it was a very different time from now. For one, there was still something called a left in this country. There was also something called a right, a recognizably rational position like the one held by my old friend—and I use this term despite the many times we disagreed—Bill Buckley.
As you may know, it was hard for me to get work in this country for years and years after the Davis case, so I went into exile in France.
I had never been good with money, and almost all I’d earned was gone. So I didn’t think twice about saying yes to the BBC when they asked me to travel to Kingston to do voice-overs and interviews for a two-part series on dub.
For those of you who don’t know what dub is—well, lemme see if I can explain. It’s a kind of reggae. And we all know what that is. But imagine a kind of spacey, warpy, instrumental reggae with snatches of sound—voices, clock chimes, bird calls—pretty much anything an engineer could imagine while smoking pot (which could be anything, couldn’t it?), drifting out and in.
I was one of a crew of six. In addition to me there was a producer, two camera operators, a lighting tech, and a sound engineer. At forty-five, I was the oldest, and the only girl.
Anyway, within an hour or so of settling down at the Sheraton, just as I had lit my second spliff, Nigel, the producer, phoned to say our driver had relayed instructions that we shouldn’t order dinner because he’d be coming back to take us out.
Well, I became quite grumbly—believe it or not, I can be a bitch—but Nigel convinced me I should go, that it made sense to play nice, especially since he had the sense that the invitation had come from high up. And we needed protection. Most of the recording studios in Kingston were in or near the slums.
So we piled into a cream and white VW camper and off we went. We were staying in New Kingston, a rather optimistic grid of new streets with few buildings, but as far as streets go, well laid out.
From there we drove in light traffic through neighborhoods with large colonial homes and old trees. I remember one of these districts being referred to by the driver as Trafalgar Park.
The driver. Ahhhh. The driver. I’d paid no attention to him at the airport. His name was Wayne Haddad, and he was about twenty-one. From the conversation he was having with the lighting tech, I gathered he was in his last year at the university, in his parlance, reading history with econ.
He was short and slim with an afro that was turning into something else. I remember thinking as we drove that if he turned up in Brazil or Venezuela he would easily blend in.
After a twenty-minute drive, which took us up along a wellpopulated ridge, we arrived at what we learned was his parents’ house. Like its far-flung neighbors it looked like something from the hills of LA. Lots of cut stone and plate glass. And a huge veranda reaching way over a cliff.
We dined with Wayne’s parents—Maylynn and Clive—at a long white table set beneath some sort of fruit tree strung with lights. The broad city lay below us like a beaded cloth.
Maylynn looked and sounded slightly Irish. Clive was black, light brown, but called himself Lebanese. We had duck, I remember. And fish. There might have also been roast beef. But I’ll never forget the turtle soup, which I’d only had before in New Orleans. And booby eggs. Small brown speckled things. They were poached.
Anyway, Wayne drifted away from the table midcourse and didn’t return. He paused for a moment between his mother and me, leaned on the backs of our chairs and kissed her neck, then reached through the spindles and tugged my dress.
By this time, small conversation groups had sprung up. I asked Maylynn about her son. He was nearly fluent in French, she said. But before more came out a sonic fog began to creep across the lawn. As the bass increased in volume, the forks and china shook.
Clive shouted, “Turn off that damn Bob Marley! Don’t you see we have guests from abroad?” He began to stand, but Maylynn fanned him down.
I asked about Wayne again. His mother put her hand on mine and leaned in close. He’d only been allowed to work in the family business earlier that year. He was a bright boy, but unappreciated by his father, which sometimes made him—she gestured with her hand—erratic. She and Clive owned a few gift shops, including the one at our hotel. They also owned a pharmacy, a hardware store, two supermarkets, a fleet of rental cars, and the camper, which she called a tour bus.
Wayne, I found out, wasn’t actually a driver. He’d somehow found out there was a French speaker in our group, at which point he’d told her that he wasn’t going to simply organize our transportation, he’d do the job himself.
Clive began to fan his nose. The music was bringing with it a certain herbal scent.
After being in Kingston for about ten days, most of them on the hot plains interviewing men with nicknames like Niney and Leggo and Yabby You, we were invited up to Maylynn and Clive’s again.
This time when Wayne reached between the spindles I waited till the music started, asked for directions to the bathroom, and met him in his flat, a wooden cottage set way off from his parents’ modern, concrete house.
I was so self-conscious, getting into bed with him. Since that first time he’d touched me, all our screwing had been done in the parking lot of the Sheraton against the Camper, standing up.
“We should have a proper date one day,” I said as I walked out.
The music was so loud I didn’t think he’d even hear. I’d been in movies since I was fourteen. To me, lights, cameras, and travel had always meant sex.
I didn’t need Wayne to show me any kind of serious intent. I was twice his age to begin with. And he wasn’t really my type. I liked men with presence. But he was convenient. And good looking. And most importantly, his parents owned a pharmacy, and for the last week or so he’d been getting me my stuff.
The gardener drove us back to the hotel that night. I waited up. Wayne didn’t call. I took a Valium with my rum.
The next day I took amphetamines to keep me up. Wayne seemed quite distant. Even cross. Barely spoke to anyone.
It was about nine or so when we arrived at the hotel. We’d spent all morning with Augustus Pablo at a sophisticatedlooking studio near a skating rink.
The phone rang at close to midnight. It was Wayne. I had just finished up a phone call with a casting agent. Another job had fallen through. Before I went downstairs I took a few Pertranquils then drew a line of coke to balance out.
Wayne was leaning on a blue Citroën 2CV. This was his car. He kissed me for the first time ever. Opened my door. I was wearing bell-bottom jeans and a pink tube top. He was wearing a black leather jacket despite the heat.
When I got inside the car it seemed that Wayne was unsure what to do. We drove for about fifteen minutes with the radio off before we even spoke.
“So what do you have in mind?” I asked.
“Kingston is not like Montego Bay,” he mumbled. “We close down kinda early. We don’t have a lot of tourists here. But don’t worry. I know where the action is.”
We kept driving, mostly in silence. The bug-eyed car nosed like a rodent through the empty streets. Shopping centers with
For Rent
signs drifted by. At traffic lights we’d sometimes see half-naked men just lying on the sidewalk or walking in circles talking to themselves. A few clicks down from a late-night burger place we saw a car pull over and a male arm holding out a lunch box and gesturing come-ons to children who were looking through a garbage bin.
Each time I saw something like this I’d stare at Wayne. This world outside his window meant nothing. He just kept driving toward the distant sparkling hills.
We eventually came upon a stretch of road completely given over to bars and clubs, simple buildings in bright colors with hand lettering and makeshift designs. Cars were parked two wheels up on the curb. Rough men in knit caps and newsboys milled about. The music was constant but not loud.
Wayne led me upstairs to a spot called the Stable. It was a go-go joint—something anyone could tell from its name.
In some kind of weird pretense of actually dating, he sat beside me with his hand on my leg, but we didn’t really speak. His perspiration made the odor of his jacket rise up.
Anyway, we stayed there for hours, shoulders touching in the dim blue light, watching black girls in white boots shake it. The speakers in the ceiling made the disco rain down. He drank beer. I drank rum. We shared a pack of Rothmans.
“Mind if I smoke a spliff?” I asked.
“One whiff of weed,” he told me, “and they’d throw us out.”
“So, blow,” I joked, “would get us banned for life.”
“No,” he said. “They wouldn’t even know what it was.”
Bingo!
I reached for the foil in my purse. He raked his fingers through his hair, and reached inside his jacket for some aviator shades. It felt thrilling to sit there in front of everyone doing lines, almost as thrilling as the times we’d screwed unnoticed in the parking lot of the Sheraton while cars passed by.
He leaned into me. My lips fell apart. But he didn’t kiss me. He put his mouth against my ear and said, “Let’s speak in fucking French.”
Now, I had been with weird men before. But aren’t men in general a little weird? And as far as weirdness goes, it wasn’t such a strange request. The way I read it, he wanted to show me he was hip.
So while the guys at the rusting iron tables all around us chewed ice cubes and drank Guinness and talked about which of the naked girls they’d done or would like to do, Wayne spoke to me in French.