Red Jacket (30 page)

“I wouldn't assume anything on the part of the law.”

“The assumption seems reasonable enough to me.”

“The law isn't reasonable. And since I'm the lawyer, why don't you let me form the opinions?”

David Klein advises her that, since Jeremiah's father will probably find out about the child eventually, she should tell him directly. When she refuses, he tells her that if he wishes, Mark Blackman can easily get access; indeed, sue for shared custody.

“Wouldn't he have to prove the child is his?”

“Of course. But that's easy to do.”

“What if I don't let him near the child?”

“For Jeremiah's sake, you'll want to avoid the trouble that would bring.”

Secrets

Grace knows everybody hides things, good things sometimes, like she mostly hides Charlie. She knows Phyllis has secrets, maybe not of her own making, but still secrets. She is sure the biggest one is her father, Ralston, whose name Phyllis spewed at her at the end of their quarrel the day her mother brought Mona Blackman home.

Gramps warned Grace when he gave her Phyllis's letters that her father was a bad man and made it plain he did not wish to speak of him. Phyllis's attitude has always been much the same. Out of deference to Gramps and consideration for Phyllis, she'd asked no further about him. Once Phyllis says his name, though, she reckons he is up for discussion. She is curious about him, wicked though he may be, and besides, her child is his grandchild. That justifies her interest. What if Jeremiah has inherited some congenital disease from his grandfather? She asks about him repeatedly, insisting she has a right to know whose blood is in her body, whose genes have gone into her child.

“All in good time, Grace,” Phyllis responds. “All in good time.”

The “good time” arrives one Sunday afternoon, about a week later. Phyllis invites her to sit at the kitchen table and sits facing her, just as Gramps had done.

“It's hard, Grace, what I'm going to tell you.”

“It's better for me to know, Mum, even if it is hard.”

“That's true. Can't quarrel with that. But he ... Your father ... Ralston Patterson was not a good person.”

“We're making headway. I now know his name.”

“Don't his name is on your birth paper?”

“The space where my father's name should be is empty.”

“I've never seen that paper, so I never knew that.”

“Gramps gave it to me with your letters. Anyway, now you know.” So Phyllis's surname and Ralston's are the same — but surely they weren't married?

“Somebody was being considerate, so they never put it down,” Phyllis says.

“Meaning what?”

“I'm going to tell you how he and me share a name. I'm going tell you everything.”

“Good.”

“Far from it.”

Through the long windows, Grace sees a crude wind force its way through trees and bushes at the same time that some ghostly off-switch suddenly outs the light in the sky. She shivers. Phyllis too. Asleep in his playpen in the living room, Jeremiah moans.

“I am sitting on my bed, reading, when I hear Ralston coming, banging on the metal gate, flowerpots, front door, and then he come in and slam the door to his room. I wonder if I should ask him if something is wrong, but I decide to let sleeping dogs lie, so I go back to concentrating, for that time I can't read so good.

“All of a sudden I smell somebody beside me stink of beer, cigarettes, and sweat. I feel the bed slope as he put his weight on it. I never even have time to ask him what he is doing in my room, and he never even say ‘dog' to me, just shove me onto the rug on the floor beside the bed. To this day I don't know why he never just do it on the bed. I make that rug myself when I was eight. I walk all up and down Hector's Castle begging people for cloth, and the rug remind me of so many people: Ma Phelps up Loomy Road that give me a piece of tartan, say her sister send it from Scotland for her eightieth birthday; Mrs. Budhai that give me a scrap of green silk, a bit of the sari her grandmother wear when she step off the boat from India; Sister Mingo that give me a strip of heavy navy blue cloth her mother use to cover the windows in wartime, still strong and sound as a drum.

“Is there he pin me, wiggling his underpants down his legs. Is only when I see his prick stand up, big and sticky, with the front part peel off that I realize he come into the room without no trousers. I see plenty man bathing in river and at standpipe, but I never see a penis in that state before.

“He drop down on me, haul up my skirt, lock his knees round my thighs, and wrestle down my panty. Poor me, fool, just staring, surprise mix up with fright, when I should be doing something to save myself. Not that I could move that easy, for he holding me down, and never mind he slim, he strong like the wiss vine we use to play Tarzan in the guango tree.”

Upstairs, a window bangs. Thunder rumbles far off. Raindrops, small frightened birds, peck at the windows.

“When I could speak, I talk so soft is only me hear. The worst part is the words follow the motion of his hips, like the penis was poking them out. A pain like a knife cut my belly, then blood. I pass out as his seed was coming in me.”

“Mum …” Grace starts to get up. They need something. Rum, maybe, or brandy.

“I am not finished yet. Please sit and hear me out. Ralston was my mother's child by another man. He was my half-brother. Daphne give us both her family name.”

It is a long time before Grace speaks. “And that is the person you say I am exactly like?”

Graduation

They celebrated first in the morning with a sung Mass in the dining room. Mass isn't strange to Grace. She had gone to Catholic ones with Steph and to Anglican ones at St. Chad's. Jimmy explains that a sung Mass is just that: a Mass that is sung. She's heard the “Missa Luba,” but never in a church, and she's never heard Jimmy do more than hum a few notes.

His face is many smiles, the clan markings describing new patterns all the time.

All twenty graduates attend Mass. Families come too, which is why they use the dining room. The musicians are a surprise: Ousmain on the kyondo, Monique and Tekawitha on kikumvi, Elise and Lili controlling the boyeki, called “scrapers” in St. Chris. As she listens to Jimmy leading the call and response of the Kyrie, she is tempted to forgive his wicked God a little. Then she recalls the news Phyllis gave her about Ralston, and the tiny well of forgiveness dries up.

That evening twenty Mabulian community workers trained at the centre sing a song of their own composition and dance to its music across a makeshift stage lit by banks of torches on either side. They set up the stage in front of the main communal hall, between the arms of covered walkways that lead from the central structure to the women's and children's wards. Sitting out front, the families of the graduates, friends from the surrounding villages and nearby towns, most of the community of persons living with HIV/AIDS at the centre, the centre staff, and their distinguished visitor all clap and stamp out the rhythms played by the five musicians. Thunder rolls in the distance, background to the drums and xalams that accompany the performers.

The graduates studied for the first four months of the year: how to type, use a computer, keep a journal, input data on a spreadsheet. They learned more about HIV/AIDS. Many live with the disease, so they already know a great deal. Amitié is an expert. “I will teach you. I am a diagram. I am a history.” Whereupon she recites the stages of the disease, its earliest symptoms, how it spreads, finally producing her daughter, Azzara as evidence that, with AZT, it need not be passed to babies. “Mabuli, c'est un bon pays. Vous pouvez
être
testés. You can be tested. Vous pouvez avoir des médicaments. You can have medicine. The Oti told our government to spend money on health workers and education, to support community efforts, to work with international agencies. We know the power of the Oti. Nous connaissons bien la force d'Oti!”

They perform the “Pat-a-Cake, Take Your Pills” handclapping song invented by Elise and Lili, the dazzling display of their quick arms and bouncing hips prompting the audience to prolonged cheering. Then, in sometimes deeply moving, and often wildly funny presentations, graduates saunter, leap, or sashay onto the stage and announce, coyly or mock-tragically, ranting or quietly, “I am a person with the Skinny. I live with HIV/AIDS. Je vis avec le VIH/SIDA.” Then they dance or sing or act out their individual stories.

If the core staff at Tindi are proud, the graduates preen like ibises as they sing at the end of the ceremony the song with which they started:

We who come from the land of walking stones

whose forbears overthrew a tyrant

when they met and chanted hymns

and histories and holy songs

will overcome also this cruelty

with bonds of solidarity;

will overcome also this cruelty

with mighty bonds of solidarity.

A Hypothetical

Jimmy doesn't go to sleep right away that night, upset because Grace is clearly ill. She is thin, her skin dull, her eyes sunken. He asks her what is wrong.

“It's nothing, nothing a good night's sleep won't cure, as you would say.” She is a bad liar. She goes to bed after the ceremony, pleading the avowed tiredness. So does he. Unable to sleep, he gets up, pokes his head out, smells rain, and reckons it will come before morning. Further down the verandah, he notices the light on in Grace's room. He dresses, walks down to her door, and knocks.

“Who is it?”

“It's me, Grace. Jimmy.”

“Is there something wrong, Jimmy?”

“That's what I came to find out.”

“I'm fine, thank you. You can't come in. I'm in my nightclothes.”

“I've seen you naked, Grace. Besides, you have robes, dressing gowns, wraps. Put something on.”

“You need sleep, Jimmy. I need sleep. Go back to bed. I'm turning out my light.”

“If you don't open this door, you will regret it, Grace Carpenter.”

“Is that a threat, Jimmy Atule?”

“Not a threat. A promise.”

She is hugging a robe around her when she lets him in. Invited to sit, he chooses a chair by the door. Birds honk, squawk, whirr like rusty machinery. Fat bugs bounce against the window screen.

“I don't remember it being so loud.”

“Nature continuing the celebrations.” He is proud and not hiding it.

“Your graduates are going to do great things.”

“I hope so. But they're not why I'm here.”

“Why are you here, Jimmy?”

“We need to do a hypothetical, Grace.” It is Grace who intro-duced hypotheticals to him. He often runs them with Monique and the folks in admin now, as well as at project meetings.

“If you insist.”

“Over to you, Dr. Carpenter. What are we looking at, hypothetically?”

“Let's say someone just discovered incest in her family.” She doesn't answer right away, but once she starts, she soldiers on, quick march. “She's beside herself. She's a person of colour, abroad, in a strange place. She's not European, so the experts available aren't the best fit. What can she do?”

“Can you say all that again, please?” He has taken it all in, but retelling will mitigate some of her revulsion.

“The subject is a woman of colour, from my part of the world, living in Europe, who has just found out about incest in her family. Okay?”

“Okay.” Skating over life on a surface of irony.

“What do you recommend?”

“How old is this woman?”

“I don't know. My age.”

She is talking about herself. Once he is aware of that, he decides he has to take her through it, step by step, all the way, regardless of where they end up. Rites are reassuring. That is their nature. Careful rehearsal, a path cut gradually, firmly through. At the centre they prepare the dying and their families in this way.

“And is she involved in the incest, in other words, has she discovered that someone with whom she is having a sexual relationship is a family member?”

“Jesus, Jimmy. That's sick.”

“Come on, Grace. You know it happens all the time.”

“I know, but … ”

“But it's not supposed to happen to you or me?” He isn't being hard. She has to see people in incestuous relationships as “we,” as “us.”

“I'll avoid the ‘It's fine for you to talk' bit and just stick to the matter at hand. It's her parents. They were half-siblings, different fathers, same mother.”

“Mmm. That would be difficult too.”

“I'm not sure she'd be better off in her home country, which is very conservative, but I don't know how she can find help in the place where she is.”

“How well do you know this person, Grace?”

“Well enough, I guess.”

“And has she just learned about this situation?”

“Yes.”

“I think I understand the ‘if this' part of the hypothetical.”

“Isn't the ‘then what?' part obvious? Then what can she do?”

“She's a well-adjusted person?”

“I suppose so.”

“I'd say she should be cautious about seeing any old professional. Does she belong to a church? Have any ties of that kind?”

“She's not so good with God.”

“Right. Is she living with anyone?”

“She has offspring, but no spouse.”

“Does she live with the incestuous parents?”

Her “no” is ferocious.

“Does she have a relationship with her parents?”

“In touch with her mother. Doesn't know her father.”

“Did the parents have a relationship?”

“I just said it was incestuous!”

“That doesn't answer the question.”

“The father raped the mother.”

“Okay. The incest was a matter of just that one time, was it?”

“Christ, Jimmy! They had a child. This is about her.”

“I can't answer you off the top of my head. I need to think about it.”

“She may jump off a bridge.”

“Okay. I won't be responsible for any deaths. I think you should suggest to this person that she find the best, nearest available help from a professional from her part of the world, or whatever culture, society is most similar. If that's impossible, then find the best, nearest shrink.”

“A professional from her region; failing that, the best therapist. Is that it?”

“It is if I have to make a call so she won't kill herself. If she isn't allergic to religious places, I can suggest a couple institutes. There's a fine one in Rome, run by a Jesuit: staff highly trained and diverse. One in Syria too. Damascus.”

“Well, since you recommend them. Can you give me contact info?”

“Absolutely.”

“Thanks. I think you'd better go now.”

“Will you be okay?”

“Yes.”

“I'll see you in the morning.”

“Good night, Jimmy.”

“Good night, Grace.” He wants to hold her in his arms, hug her, comfort her, but he doesn't.

En route to Ouaga Airport, Grace and Jimmy make a detour, stopping at the novitiate.

“What's a Catholic seminary doing in Mabuli?” Grace is sulking.

“There are places they should and shouldn't be?”

“Oh! I forgot. Fair numbers in Mabuli are Catholic. Your church, sticky paws all over, has numerous hostages from among whom to entrap the unsuspecting.”

“It's not a very large number of Catholics, and you needn't be mean to my church. I wouldn't be mean to yours if you had one.” They are on stairs that sweep down to a courtyard in a stand of date palms. “The novices just made a new stone garden. There.” Jimmy kicks a stone all the way down the stairs. “At the bottom, with benches.”

“A what?”

“A stone garden, my beloved. You're meant to rake the stones and be soothed.”

“Oh. A meditative raking of stones! My life, absent the meditative part.”

“Mine too. Lots of us have lives of raking stones, or lives raked by stones.”

“You sit too,” she instructs when they get to the bottom of the stairs. “You haven't told me about Rome, Jimmy, though I've inquired more than once. For all I know, they called you up to discover what some woman was doing in your room in the middle of the night.”

“They don't summon us for that kind of stuff. They'd have too many Jesuits to deal with.”

“Seriously, Jimmy. What happened?”

“It wasn't so bad. I told them the woman who'd been in my room was generous with her favours.”

“I said, don't joke.”

“They were kind, Grace. They read me Father Agbidi's letter. I assured them that I wasn't flouting church teaching, but I said my conscience insisted that I tell mates of both genders whose partners had the disease that condoms were an option. If I failed to, I was effectively condemning people to death, women especially, and with that my conscience had serious problems. I said I was preaching only the best behaviours — fidelity and chastity.”

“They bought that?”

“I wasn't selling them anything. It's true.”

“Did they send you to your shrink?”

“I saw him.”

“Did it help?”

“A little.”

She leans her head back, closes her eyes.

“Don't you want to talk about last night, Grace?”

“What's more talking going to do?” She remarks on the three baobabs patrolling the fence line. He explains about the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the chapel inside the third tree.

“The Father looks ragged, like he's on his last legs.”

“It's a tough job.” He chuckles, by himself, then confesses. “I know it's you, Grace.”

“I know you know.”

“You still don't want to talk about it?”

She shakes her head. She is crying. Eventually she stops, wipes her eyes and blows her nose on a tissue.

“Can we go to the chapel now?”

“No chapel, Jimmy.”

“What I want to show you is in the chapel. We must go before sunset.”

“Okay. The chapel, then Ouaga. I want to go home to my son.”

They go to see Manokouma's windows. He makes her cover her eyes, open them in front of the Angelus window with the ruddy, freckled Mary.

Back in the stone garden looking at the bloody sky, he takes a stab at it. “There's more to it than this, though, isn't there?”

She nods.

“You might as well tell me.”

So she off-loads her cargo of grief, the burden of a self that she now judges to be ruined at the root: Grace, the dump pikni; the red jacket in a black family; the child too terrified to open her mouth; the sibling with a sister who disclaimed her; the misfit at St. Chad's. She rails about the evils that fate has engineered, things for which she can have no responsibility: Fillmore Buxton, family member and would-be rapist; Colin who died by hunger in rich Toronto; Ralston, incestuous despoiler of her teenage mother. She berates his God for not breathing a word of warning so she could avoid the humiliating débacle with Lindsay, for not restraining the mean tongue that engineered the argument that led to Phyllis's stroke. They are actions for which she is responsible, but his God might have extended a hand of gentle caution.

And then on tiptoe, for the first time at last, she lets Charlie out of his box.

They spend the night as guests of the novice master, leaving for Ouaga early next morning. Jimmy drives like a madman, and she makes the plane.