Red Jacket (2 page)

“Exactly right, but for a generation. His great-grandpa and my great-grandpa were half-brothers. Can you believe that?”

Gracie grin, nod, and then she ask, “So a bit of you is white then, Gramps?”

“I suppose so, Gracie. In this country, chances are a little bit of almost everybody is white.” He look at her for a moment. “Why? Does it matter?”

She shake her head to say no, and right away feel bad because she know it is a lie, a big lie. But if a little bit of Gramps is white, then perhaps she don't need to feel bad about the fact that she don't look so black. Maybe the colour you are is just a matter of luck. Maybe there is lots of black in her that don't manage to find its way out. Maybe, if she ever have a son, he will be a proper black man, dark as Gramps and Pa.

25 March 1966

My dear little daughter,

Happy birthday! Today you are six years old! You must be going to school now maybe even big school. I wish I could see you in your uniform with a red ribbon in your hair and your school bag and lunch pan. I am so proud of you. I know you are going to be a good girl and learn as much as you can for sure I am praying for that. I have some news. Your Grandma Daphne my real mother is getting married next month and it is a big thing so she don't have time to think of much more than that. The man has four children and two are small ten and eight years. We don't meet them yet but she say soon. Once she is married she going to live with the whole of them in New Jersey for those children need her. That will leave just me and Granny Evadne. Granny Vads, for is so we call her is mother to Daphne and Granny to me. I am trusting God that we will able to manage. I am eighteen years old now and working at school to make a little money. I help all around sometimes in the kitchen sometimes in the office sometimes to make the new girls feel confortable. Sister Agnes say if I work hard maybe there is a job for me. I will wait on the Lord and see how things turn out. Lucille Gray who live here with Daphne a long time is still boarding so we make someting from that and Daphne say she will help us. I think her husband have money. They drive a big new car and he have his own house. At least that is what Daphne say.

I have some other news for you. Last time I say I would tell you when I can swim all the way down the swimming pool by myself. Well I can do that now. I remember how I was so scared when I start. Maybe if you can not swim yet one day I can teach you.

Sister say take a interest in what going on in the world so here is the news. Things still don't go so good here in this America. Last year August they have a big palampam in a place name Wats in California. Plenty people die and get injure because police beat up two black fellows bad bad and people get vex and make a riot. I don't know why these police think they can carry on so.

I send you all my love.

Your loving mother,

Phyllis

P.S. There was a big outage here in November last year. Imagine no light anyhere in this big New York City. I have to laugh because they are so boasy saying those things happen only to poor countries. But it happen here for true.

The Boys to the Rescue

Gracie feel from she is small-small that she will never be like Pansy, eldest child of all, strong and facety, fearing nothing. Pansy talk her mind, sometimes even to Ma and Pa. Not Gramps though. Gramps can fix her with a look. Mostly, Pansy just go where she like, do what she want, and don't care what follow.

Gracie will never be like that. She is not strong and fearless. She don't fit with the rest of them. She is skinny: “bird bones,” they tease her. Her hair is flimsy and red. She have freckles — dots of red-brown colour on her cheeks and nose. Everybody say her nose and lips are “fine,” which is to say they are thin like white people own. And her eyes, which are sort of greeny-grey, are the wrongest of all. “Puss Eye,” they call her at school.

Ma, Pa, and the others are good and black, with thick heads of hair, and nothing pointy on their face. To Grace everything about them is steadfast and strong: lips and noses and cheeks and chins, strapping shoulders and arms and legs. Ma can carry anything on the cotta on her head: baskets of provisions from market, pails of clothes to wash at the river when the standpipe is dry, planks of board to mend the house or batten it down in storm and hurricane. Pansy can balance a good-size basket on her head too. She have her own cotta, make from part of a old frock that she wind tight on itself to form a rope, then round and round to make a cushion for the basket to rest on.

“Not the only cloth I use now,” Pansy announce with a secret smile, when she see Grace one day gazing at the cotta with envy. Grace can make a cotta, but Ma not going to let her put any basket on her head. Grace don't know what Pansy mean about any other cloth, so she just wait till Pansy turn back to her homework, then long out her tongue as far as it will go at her back.

Grace badly need to discover something that will make her feel special, something she is excellent at, something that will make people think good things about her. For a long time she think and think, and she finally make up her mind to learn to read best and fastest, and to practice to recall what she read with the highest powers of remembering. Gramps help her, but he have no idea as he sounding out words with her, how much she is taking in. The first day Ma catch her ciphering out things from
The Clarion
, reading aloud “Five Children Left Alone Killed in Fire,” Ma make to grab the paper, and then stop and address Grace with a square, inquiring look. “Grace, you can read that?”

“Yes, Ma.”

“Come, read some more,” Ma say, turning the pages quick, looking for something a small child can safely read.

That is a long time ago. Now Grace can read anything. She study her tables too, so she can add, subtract, and multiply in her head, no counting on fingers. Mr. Wong say her head is fast as the cash register in his shop. And from the day that she hear Gramps say
sempervivum
, she store the word away in her heart like the mother of Jesus in the Bible story and she take it out and touch her tongue on it now and then. Every time she taste it, she is more sure that something will come of it. She know Gramps will explain about this other language, and he will teach her more words that are strange and juicy on her tongue.

25 March 1967

My dear daughter,

Sister Magdalene say seven is the age of reason. I think I was reasoning before I was seven but maybe St. Chris children are smarter than the ones up here. Smile! I am certain you are very smart and behave good and work hard. I know because I pray for it every day. I pray believing I will get what I am praying for which is how Jesus say you should pray. I expect you to do great things when you grow up maybe be the Prime Minister of our country. There is going to be lots of Prime Ministers in the Caribbean and I don't see why you should not be a lady prime minister, that is if you want.

Granny Vads and me are managing not too bad and we see Daphne and her husband from time to time about once a month maybe. One time I took the train with Granny Vads to the town of Edison where they live but even though we take a taxi to the big train station here and they pick us up over there in their car it was hard for Granny Vads, so we not going do that any time soon again. She is feeling stronger now and the cold don't so much trouble her but she is not strong like she was in St. Chris.

Granny Vads would send love if she know I was writing, but is a secret between Mr. Carpenter and me. God bless and keep you always.

Your mother,

Phyllis

As they grow, and Grace is looking more and more different from Pansy and Stewie and the others, one and two people in the district not bothering to talk behind their hands any more. Don't mind that they are standing right beside her, they throw their remarks into the air like Grace is deaf and can't hear them. The things they say make her feel bad, though she try not to pay them mind, so she is glad for her brothers, Stewie (first boy, tall and stringy), Edgar (third child, thick and solid), and Conrad (after Grace, short and stringy) that help her not to heed these people too much.

Those boys behave like somebody give them happiness sweeties with their cornmeal porridge in the morning, porridge that Grace hate like poison. But the boys sneak and eat her porridge between them, and then they pick whatever fruit is in season from the trees they pass on their way to school — mango, orange, redcoat plum, June plum, pawpaw, starapple — and give to Grace so she don't go to school hungry. Either that, or else they thief out Gramps allotment of brown sugar for his cocoa-tea, for Grace can just see her way to eating the porridge if it have plenty brown sugar in it.

Again and again Ma ask where is the sugar she set out in Gramps cup, first thing.

“No, Ma!” the boys say in chorus. “You don't set out Gramps sugar for his tea yet. We would know. We would see.” That time the sugar done melt down into her porridge and she eating it, one small spoonful, then another.

Then come one of those awful, dark days that make Grace believe in hell for true because this is what it must be like when the light and presence of the Lord is withdrawn. From time to time she is mountainously afraid, she don't know why, and with the for-no-reason fearfulness come dark weather days when her head thump like a drum, her stomach want to jump out her mouth, and her skin feel clammy. Today is a day like that, plus today she have a job she hate above all. She is at Mr. Wong's shop. She dash there during a break in the deluges that scouring the sky for more than two weeks now, so bad there is flooding all over St. Chris and four people dead. The sheets of
The Clarion
Ma give her to cover her head soak through in two seconds so she is cold and wet and fidgeting from foot to foot, trying to remember Ma's shopping list, for fear, which is the only thing that can do it, fry up her brain.

She hate the damp, smelly shop full up with people panting their warm breaths above her like a herd of animals in a pen. Ma say she is growing, but she still have to fight for space. She tip on her toe, gripping the coins that sliding through her wet fingers, stretching forward to rap on the counter loud enough so Mr. Wong will hear and notice her, for then he will serve her before the big people, and curse them in his Chinese language if they make any complaint.

That afternoon, Mr. Wong is looking hard at the woman standing beside Grace, his nose trembling like a sniffing mouse, like he know before she open her mouth that she going say something nasty. Grace is trying to make room beside Mrs. Sommersby, careful not to interfere with the woman's plentiful self or step on her fat toes. When Mrs. Sommersby glance down and see Grace beside her, a look like she taste something bad pass across her face, and she start to broadcast her mind, as Gramps would say.

“What-a-way this child colour is red and the rest of the family so black, eh? Just go to show, you can never know how pikni will turn out. And look her fine-fine hair! Her mother must give thanks every morning for this chile's soft hair. No fighting with kink and krinkle. And soft hair is not usual with redibo, for you know those St. Philip red people, their head dry, with hair that sparse and picky-picky!”

Same time as Mr. Wong is glaring from his low height, drawing himself up like he getting ready to do a kung-fu move on Mrs. Sommersby,
braps!
Conrad arrive like a little body bomb.

“Oh, God! Get off me! Get off me, you wicked boy!” Mrs. Sommersby turn into a gigantic bottom as she bend over and grab at her pink stockings. She wear them roll down to the knees and with the roll twist into a knot to make them stay up, but now, sake of the collision with Conrad, they are sliding down her fat legs and meeting up with the contents of his schoolbag: exercise books, string, stubs of crayon, marbles, jacks.

Conrad's red rubber jacks ball bounce right between Mrs. Sommersby's gigantic breasts when she bend over, while his skinny limbs are twining about her fat legs like a wiss vine, tangling everything up in a busy confusion.

Stewie and Edgar enter and start quarrelling with Conrad.

“
Cho, Conrad, man. Make you can't look where you going?” Stewie ask.

“Conrad, how much time people tell you to walk and don't run?” Edgar follow up. Two of them put on a song and dance, insisting that Conrad apologize to “Miss-triss Som-merz-bee,” meanwhile she complaining about bad boys that love to gaze up under big woman skirt. When she say that, Mr. Wong suck his teeth.

“After no likl boy not so tupid,” he mumble, but loud enough for people to hear. “Dat one dry up, drop off de tree, long time.” Still, he scrape the woman up and make a show of asking if she is all right.

She sniff, pat down her skirt, roll her stockings up and twist the tops, push her bosom back into place.

After he serve her, Mr. Wong send his son to pull her goods home in his cart.

She leave with a last lick. “Little red jacket! Like we all don't know how the hair so reddy-reddy and soft!”

Mr. Wong make another long suck-teeth and then speak to Grace kind and consoling while he serving her. “Not a nice lady. Not like your Mama, no sir.” He frown at the boys as he give them peppermint balls and hurry them home. “Run quick. Rain soon fall! Take care of Miss Gracie!”

Outside Edgar and Stewie help Grace with Ma's groceries, the three of them jumping over orange patches of watery dirt and ditches of dark red mud, dodging the on-and-off, heavily falling rain.

The Burning Tree and the Balloon Man

25 March 1968

My dearest little girl,

I wish for you a peaceful and happy eighth birthday in this world of trial and trouble. I know Ma and Pa Carpenter and old Mr. Carpenter will do something special to make it a happy day, and I hope you have fun with your brothers and sisters and friends.

In some ways it pains me that you are growing bigger for the older you get, the more you will know that the world is not the place it should be. All the same, there are plenty good people. If I could, I would send some books especially about great men and women from our part of the world, like Marcus Garvey and the wonderful nurse, Mary Seacole, and Sarah Grandby, a great lady from St. Chris who worked with Mrs. Seacole for a while.

I have a sad story to tell you. I met a woman at a convenience store on Broadway where I sometimes go to pick up things I need in a hurry. She was beside me doing her shopping. I heard some crying and when I looked, tears were running down her face. I asked what was wrong and she said that she just heard that her one remaining son was killed in the Vietnam War. He was the third one to die over there. I helped her finish shopping, and I walked home with her.

So never mind I would love to have you with me, every single day, I am glad you are far from all this. I pray one day all the children in the world will grow up in peace. You are lucky that you are growing in a quiet place. Till we meet, God bless and take care of you.

With all my love,

Your mother,

Phyllis

When the old machine cut off Pa's fingers at the sugar cane factory, backra look around quick for a next job to give him. So sake of the missing fingers, Pa get a new work counting the loads of cane that come to the factory from the small farmers nearby and also from Wentley Park Estate. Pa let them know he can write with his sound left hand for he could always use the two, and they give him the tallyman job that he is better than qualified for. It never last long, for when they see what they have in Pa, they move him up again quick enough. Is liaison with cane cutters and small farmers that Pa response for now, and that is plenty, plenty people. Nobody don't call him no liaison officer, for money would have to go along with that, but Pa know that if they never have him listening to complaints, discovering small-size trouble before it grow up and come of age, the whole of Wentley Park Estate would not be like it is now.

Grace never forget what Pa answer when her turn come to ask about the fingers, for they are not entirely gone, little finger-ends remembering what was once there. “Is not so bad, Grace,” Pa say, and he wiggle them and make her smile. “Make me think of my own life, how one day it will dwindle like these two, then vanish once and for all, like this little one here. It's a good lesson.”

After prayers the children go off into one room with Ma. Pa and Gramps take to their special corners of the larger space, the “big room” where they eat and pray and do homework at the mahogany dining table, their one good piece of furniture. The big room is where Ma keep her treasured things: the family Bible; a good set of plates (not matching but with no chips); a “Home Sweet Home” oil lamp; a statue of Jesus in lignum vitae wood; and a transistor radio for listening to the news every day and religious programs on Sunday.

In this Wentley Park place Grace come to know from school and church that she must reverence the Most High God, she learn that the wages of sin is death, that pride goeth before a fall, that the mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding fine, that God is not mocked, and that she must walk in the fear of the Lord for the fiery pit is the lot of those who disobey him. They tell her too that the Lord is her shepherd and that God love her and will send his angels to bear her up — but not with quite as much conviction as they bring to the terrible sureness of the punishments to be meted out by the Almighty.

Not Gramps, though. Gramps God is different. For one thing, he and Gramps have conversations all the time. Gramps tell her of things that God tell him, not just things that he read in the Bible. Take matters of cultivation, for example. God give Gramps special permission to grow some plants that other people are forbidden to grow. God and Gramps are often scamps together, though if you are God, you couldn't be a scamp. But if you make the laws, you could break them if you want. It sweet Grace to think God change his mind and break his own rules, and it don't at all surprise her that God should give Gramps leave to do things others are not allowed to do. Gramps is special. God is smart so he would know.

There is no prospect of Grace being led astray as she growing up for daily she learn the disastrous consequences of deserting the straight and narrow path. At night, as she lying down beside the bigger ones, for they are all sleeping together in the shrinking room — Pansy and she with heads to one end of the mattress, Stewie and Edgar with heads to the other, Ma with Conrad, Sam, and Princess on the next mattress — Grace listen to a susuing waterfall of information which start tumbling out as soon as Ma is safely snoring: who (whether big-big woman or reckless young girl) thief whose man; who make who pregnant; who lucky to lose baby and who not so lucky; who gone to the other end of the island sake of the belly they carrying; and who nearly dead sake of them try to dash away the belly. Other sins too, but there is no thiefing of stray goat, no destruction of property, no maiming a intruder with machete sake of praedial larceny that can compete with the sins related to baby-making matters.

Truth to tell, no matter what going on, Pansy and the boys are in the middle of it. Ma would say, “If is egg, those pikni into the red!” Unlike Grace, the four of them think they have a God-given right to be anywhere they choose: front bench in Zion Holiness Tabernacle and quick to examine the temple pool if there is a baptism; behind the counter at Mr. Wong shop, so make the old man get well vex sometimes; up under the window of headmistress office at the standpipe where you can drink water or pretend to drink water while you gulp the words that sail out upon the breeze, loud and clear. These are places where you can see and hear every little thing and some big ones too.

It is the said standpipe where Stewie overhear the headmistress explaining to Grace form teacher, “The child Grace is not really the Carpenters' blood kin, you know. Is adopt they adopt her.”

The day Grace get that piece of information was a day that she never forget — not for that reason, though. For another reason, having to do with what Gramps call “eternal verities,” so that what Stewie say come to her at the time as no big thing. Grace remember it all clear as day, bright as the bolt of lightning.

Behind the barracks hut is a small patch of land where Gramps plant some yam and dasheen; bok choy and cho-cho and callaloo; Scotch bonnet pepper; skellion, onion, and thyme. Ma too, have some flowering plants there that are easy to grow: cosmos and croton, puss-tail, monkey fiddle, and jump-up-and-kiss-me. Every Sunday she cut some of these flowers and put in a jam jar on the dining table.

Gramps love to tend this patch of yard, which he refer to as his “ground,” and Grace is his willing helper from ever since. And Grace know that Gramps leave the patch now and then to walk some distance into the forest that start at the boundary of the yard and stretch out to cover the low rise behind and then continue on up to the hills as they get fat and full. Is right there behind the row of barracks huts that the round hummocks begin and spread and grow to form into karst country that bump up and down for acres and acres in the middle of which is the flat place that is Wentley Park plantation. In this forest, Grace know there is another ground, a small clearing where Gramps grow some medicine plants, or so he call them. These are the ones Gramps has permission from God to cultivate. Grace know she can't go into the forest with Gramps when he going to tend that plot, so she always sit and read and patiently wait until Gramps find his way back.

Sometimes he don't come back with anything but his machete and fork, but sometimes he have bits of the plant, which he call “herbs,” and those times he would always let her watch as he carefully infuse them (so say Gramps) into a bottle of white rum, and leave them to soak.

This particular day is only Grace and Gramps at home, for Grace is breathing with great difficulty and Ma is afraid she is heading for bronchitis and so she is to stay at home and be quiet and not stray far from her bed. But late in the morning — a morning that seem long as any day and night — she is bored, for she read every piece of old newspaper she can find, so she sneak out and walk up and down the narrow rickety back porch about fifty times. She read all the words she can cipher out in the crossword puzzle that Gramps make sure to do in the day-old paper they get from Mr. Wong, after he drink his cocoa-tea in the morning. The boys always take the paper back, for Mr. Wong use it to wrap up codfish, herring, and pig's tail. Grace learn by looking at the puzzle after Gramps finish and trying to remember any new words and meanings she can make out.

So, bored and daydreaming, she climb off the porch and walk over to the back fence, which is not really a fence but a line of monkey fiddle hoisting their gristly green-and-white stems and pink-red tips from out the dark red earth. As she standing near the boundary of their plot of ground, waiting for Gramps to come back, the sky get dark quick-quick, and thunder start to roll, and lightning flash, and then a trickle of fire catch the small otaheite apple tree that serve to anchor one end of the clothes line and
zzzzt! pitchaw! pow!
Right there as Grace is staring, the tree catch afire and start to blaze.

Grace so frighten she pick up her two foot and take off into the forest after Gramps, never mind she not supposed to follow him. She race down the narrow track, not minding the prickly things that jook her feet nor the long branches that box her in her face. And she so glad when she see Gramps, she running, running up to him, fast as she can go, but she so frighten she can't get any words out of her mouth to tell Gramps about the burning tree, so she only moving her jaw up and down, and hearing no sound from her mouth, and half turning and pointing back to the yard.

And then the strangest thing, for, as soon as he hear her steps, Gramps swing round and shout at her rough-rough, “No, Grace. Not one step further. Go back into the yard. Into the house! Now!”

Grace is wounded. Gramps has called her “Grace.” Not “Gracie,” but “Grace.” Gramps never call her that. Pa sometimes; Ma sometimes; but never, never Gramps. In her heart she is deeply grieved; in her legs she is paralyzed, for she cannot now move. Instead, she stand up stock still, stuck into the ground like a yam rooted into its hill.

And Gramps have to turn around and shout at her again, not once but twice, before her brain reconnect with her foot, and she spin and race back into the yard quick as a mongoose, making sure to run round to the front of the house, sake of the fire, and into the bedroom and hide her head under the sheet on the nearest mattress and start one big cow-bawling.

But she don't turn and go before she see what is keeping Gramps in the forest: a man lying on the ground. Grace know he is dead for she see dead people before. Never one like this man, though, for the skin on his face, arms, and fingers done lift away from his body and puff up like a balloon. Grace eyes glue on to the man as she see the wind, rising now with the storm coming on, as she see it blow a piece of macca against the man's face, and she watch the thorns pierce his skin and see it pop like a burst balloon. It is in that second that Gramps spin round and shout at Grace the last time, and in that second that she find her two feet and run like her life depend on it. It is in that second, too, that her voice return to her long enough for her to scream “Fire!” at Gramps and point to the backyard.

So when Stewie whisper to Grace late that night that “Eadmistress say is adopt Ma and Pa adopt you,” Grace just give a long suck-teeth and declare, “Eadmistress too lie.”

Truth to tell, right that moment Grace not thinking about that. Is just the quickest way to deal with Stewie and his minor matters. Her head is full of too much other things: of how Gramps put her on his knee and laugh a soft-soft half-of-a-laugh and tell her he never know she had a voice so big that she could bawl like a bull-cow; of how he commend her for coming to tell him about the fire in the otaheite apple tree, never mind the storm was coming up and she must have been fraid-fraid of the lightning and the fire; of how Gramps explain that he sorry to shout at her, but that he never want her to come near to the dead man.

Grace don't let him get off so light. “But Gramps, I see dead already,” she tell him firmly.

“Not like this dead, Gracie. Not like this dead. Don't that's true?”

Grace nod, yes, but she is not yet satisfied. “But how he come to be in your ground, Gramps?”

“I don't know, Gracie. Maybe he came to help himself to some of the medicine plants that I grow there. Maybe he was so sick that he didn't know where he was going.”

“Well, that must be a bad sickness.”

“Yes. He die from a terrible sickness that eat your flesh away. I see it when I was in the war. That is a long time ago, but they still don't have no cure for it, and they don't know how it spread. That's why I make sure that we all keep far-far till the ambulance come this evening and take the corpse away.”

Nobody else see the dead man. Only she and Gramps, and Ma and Pa from a far distance, when they reach home from work, but only the shape of the body for when she, Ma, and Pa go outside, they see that Gramps cover it with a tarpaulin to shelter it from the rain that start lashing down same time she was bawling into the mattress. When all the other children come from school, they stay inside till police come. Is police that call the ambulance and come with it to take the body away.